
Class 

Book. 

CqpgM .. 



CORfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE MAN WHO WAS TOO BUSY 
TO FIND THE CHILD. 



Flutes of Silence 

Meditations on the 
Inwardness of Life 

LUCIUS H. BUGBEE 



H 



Interspersed with verses by 

EMILY BUGBEE JOHNSON 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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Copyright, 1920, by 
LUCIUS H. BUGBEE 



MAk 20 1320 



©CI.A565271 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

MY MOTHER 

WHOSE INWARD CALM TAUGHT ME LONG AGO 
THE VALUE OF SILENCE AND REFLECTION, 
AND THE VOICES OF WHOSE SPIRIT WILL SPEAK 
AMONG THE PAGES OF THIS LITTLE BOOK. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Note op Acknowledgment 9 

Poem— "Holy Hours" 11 

Inarticulate Religion 12 

"The Hot Spot in Consciousness' ' 21 

Poem— -"A Prayer" 30 

The Power of the Spirit 31 

The Personalizing of Life 42 

Poem— "The Tired Earth" 52 

The House Not Made With Hands 54 

The Quiet of Unquestioning Faith 63 

Poem — "He Knoweth the Way That We 

Take" 72 

Prayer as a Force 74 

The Great Adventure 83 

An Adventure of the Spirit 92 

Poem — "Solitude" 104 

Persons 106 

Cleansed as We Go 116 

Poem— "Growth" 127 

Seeming Poverty and Real Wealth 129 

"Spirit With Spirit Can Meet" 136 

Poem— "Sing On" 145 

"The Aristocracy of Service" 147 

Does the Future Belong to Christ ? 160 

Poem — "None Other Name" 173 



A NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

The author has sometimes wondered 
how many of the thoughts expressed in 
this little book are really his own. It 
may be that none of them are such, for he 
is sure that he has gathered them from 
every whither. Perhaps if this acknowl- 
edgment of indebtedness were complete, it 
would be quite as extensive as the book 
itself. And yet he has the hope that in 
passing through his own thought processes 
they have been minted by the touch of his 
own spirit and will enrich the treasury of 
other spirits as coin that passes from hand 
to hand. Few of us are originators, but 
to give forth material which is common 
property with the stamp of our own per- 
sonal interpretation may not be altogether 
useless. 

He desires to express his appreciation 
for permission granted him by Houghton 
Mifflin Company and George H. Doran 
Company to quote from certain standard 
authors, and by The Macmillan Company 

9 



10 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

to use a paragraph or two from Professor 
Rauschenbusch's Christianizing the Social 
Order. He is also grateful to Mr. Roger 
Babson, who cheerfully allows a quotation 
from his little book, The Future of the 
Nations, and to Mr. Richard Butler 
Glaenzer and the Yale University Press, 
who have generously permitted the use of 
that fine poem, "Vive La France!" 

To those nameless authors whose verses 
he has used without being able to ask per- 
mission, he hereby makes acknowledgment; 
and to other good friends who have 
patiently read and corrected proof and 
made suggestions. 



HOLY HOURS 

How lovingly they brood above the world, 
So still, so pure, unbarring heaven's gate 
To let a glimmer of the glory through; 
The spirit of a voiceless prayer on its 
White wing goes up, and shining 
Forms descend to meet the wanderer 
On its homeward way. Heaven 
Bends to earth, and earth looks up to 

heaven, 
And, O, if Faith lends ear, the angels' 
Silvery footfalls may be heard 
Upon life's highways and its lone 
Sequestered paths, on mercy's errands 

bent. 
Father! My heart is calm; upon its 
Feverish pulses has been laid 
The heavenly solace; and I feel that 
Thou art near in the hushed silentness. 



11 



PARTICULATE RELIGION 

"The Religion of the Inarticulate 55 — 
the phrase is from Donald Hankey. It 
is the title of a chapter in A Student in 
Arms. He applies the phrase to his com- 
rades in the trenches, most of whom were 
English workingmen. They believed thor- 
oughly in unselfishness, generosity, char- 
ity, and humility, but these qualities 
were not associated in their minds with 
Christianity, nor were these men formally 
tabulated in the statistics of any Chris- 
tian church. They had a religion. They 
were doubtless unconscious of it. It was 
the religion of the inarticulate. 

When Jesus was approaching Jerusalem 
for the last time, as he drew near to the 
city, many of his Galilsean disciples broke 
forth into enthusiastic praise. This of- 
fended the dignity of some of the Phar- 
isees who were present. They felt that it 
violated the proprieties of the occasion 
and they urged Jesus to silence his dis- 
ciples. He replied, "If these should hold 

12 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 13 

their peace, the very stones would cry 
out/' intimating that in all the inarticulate 
life of nature and of man there was an 
instinctive response to the way and the 
will and the spirit of Christ. 

One evening, many years ago, I was 
alone on the summit of a divide in south- 
eastern Montana. A wonderful panorama 
of undulating hills and valleys lay out- 
spread before me. Far to the westward 
one could see the snow-capped summits 
of the Big Horn Mountains. Far below, 
in a hollow of the hills, was the camp 
from which we had come. There was 
silence everywhere, but it was a silence 
almost audible, as if nature were trying 
to express itself. The shadows of the 
twilight gathered about me like the cur- 
tains of a sanctuary. One by one the 
candles of the stars were lighted at the 
altars of the night and I seemed to be 
joining in the great worship without words 
which goes up continually from every hill 
and valley. Then there was a rustling 
in the sagebrush near by, and turning I 
observed one of the roughest men in the 
outfit standing bareheaded not far away. 



14 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

When he saw that his presence had been 
noticed he exclaimed, "There is something 
up here to make a fellow take off his 
hat." One understood perfectly what he 
meant. He would have resented being 
called religious, and yet it was the inar- 
ticulate religious emotion of his spirit 
which was trying to find expression in his 
attitude and in his broken word. 

We all know something of what this 
means. There are moments when the 
throat is dry and the eyes are moist and 
i the great deeps within are broken up. 
We cannot tell what is the matter with 
us. We seldom stop to analyze it. We 
simply know that something deep and 
profound is stirring our inmost souls, some 
pent-up emotion seeking an outlet for its 
imprisoned force. 

Perhaps it is the sight of an innocent 
child, or a gift of flowers whose fragrance 
awakens memories, or the yearning strains 
of exquisite music, or a picture whose 
depth of meaning seems to open a win- 
dow in our spirits through which we look 
far into the unseen. Perhaps it is a quiet 
moment when we have wandered into 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 15 

some silent church. There in the subdued 
light and in the presence of symbols which 
seek to body forth the deepest thoughts 
and emotions of man's soul we find our- 
selves strangely moved and awed. Or 
perhaps the flag goes by and the band 
plays "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the 
troops march past. Some men shout and 
sing and throw up their hats, others stand 
at reverent attention with a lump in the 
throat and eyes that can scarcely see for 
tears and the heart beating like a trip- 
hammer with submerged emotion. One 
feels at such a moment as if everything 
within him had broken loose. Words are 
unavailable and inadequate. He is in- 
capable of giving expression to what he 
feels. He is like the stones that long to 
cry out. 

There is a vast amount of this inar- 
ticulate religious feeling in men which 
never comes to birth in the conventional 
speech of the Christian. 

Called one day to visit a sick child, the 
writer followed the address given and 
found himself in a wretched part of the 
community and at the door of as poor a 



16 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

hovel as was ever called a home. As he 
entered he found the mother sitting on a 
low stool in the bare room, holding the 
sick child in her arms and gazing dry- 
eyed toward a picture on the opposite 
wall. It was a copy of the familiar por- 
trait of Christ laying his hands in blessing 
upon little children, and her look seemed 
clearly to say, "He knows, he under- 
stands." Here was a woman who had not 
darkened the door of a church for many 
years and who would not have dared to 
think of herself as being religious, but in 
her soul there was an inarticulate response 
to the compassion of the Master. 

Tens of thousands of men in the trenches 
and camps during recent years knew noth- 
ing of conventional Christianity, but were 
absolutely loyal to their comrades, willing 
to share anything they had with another; 
quick to respond to any appeal for help 
and quick to sacrifice themselves for the 
great cause. And do not these things 
represent the very essence of the Chris- 
tian spirit? And is there not here repre- 
sented a vast amount of inarticulate 
religious feeling? It expresses itself, it is 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 17 

true, in deeds rather than in words, but 
it is none the less genuine for that. 

Many centuries ago this was understood 
by one of the earliest fathers of the church, 
who declared that "the human heart is 
naturally Christian. " In elemental human 
nature there is an instinctive response to 
the way and the will of the Eternal Christ. 

Some have unusual gifts of religious 
expression. It is very fortunate that this 
is so, for millions of inarticulate people 
are dependent upon those whose genius 
for expression enables them to formulate 
the thoughts and emotions which others 
cannot utter. Will the world ever be 
willing to give up its Isaiahs and its Saint 
Johns? How impoverished would we be 
if we were compelled to forego all memory 
of the great seers and prophets and 
teachers of the past? How much we owe 
to such men as Bernard and Francis, 
Luther and Wesley, Jeremy Taylor and 
Thomas Chalmers, Frederick Robertson 
and Phillips Brooks! These men have 
lived to make religion articulate for others, 
and have given definite form and value 
to vague emotions and wistful longings. 



18 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

There is a possibility, however, that we 
may sometimes put too much emphasis 
upon these gifts of religious expression and 
be too impatient and incredulous of this 
inarticulate religious feeling which is so 
universal. It is well for us to remember 
that even Jesus himself had great sym- 
pathy with it, and his associations were 
largely with those of whom it was charac- 
teristic. With those who were formally 
and conventionally religious in his time he 
had little enough to do. His disciples 
were drawn from among rough men, some 
of whom were so ignorant of the formal 
rules of religion that they unwittingly 
broke them on many occasions. When he 
was entertained in Capernaum it was not 
in the house of the ruler of the synagogue, 
but in the house of Matthew, the publican, 
a social and religious outcast; and many 
were the occasions in which he showed 
his preference for the fellowship of those 
whose religious life was inarticulate but 
genuine, rather than those who were more 
expressive but less sincere. 

It was for this reason, indeed, that the 
common people heard him gladly. He 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 19 

understood their unformed and unuttered 
faith. He made religion articulate for 
them. He embodied those elemental vir- 
tues and graces in whose beauty and 
necessity they instinctively believed. And 
if Jesus were here in person to-day, we 
cannot doubt but he would find equal 
value in the inarticulate religious emotions 
of our own time. 

The tragedy of this situation is that 
there are multitudes of men and women 
who believe absolutely in the Christian 
virtues of unselfishness, generosity, char- 
ity, and humility. They practice these 
virtues in great measure, but in their 
thought they do not connect them with 
Christianity, or at least with the Christian 
Church. On the other hand, they do 
associate with the Christian movement 
that smug self-righteousness and incon- 
sistency which Jesus spent his whole life 
in trying to eradicate. 

There is, then, a potential Christian in 
every man, and it is the chief function 
of the church to make that Christian 
articulate. We must help men to see that 
our creeds and prayers and forms are but 



20 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

the symbols of what they most admire 
and of all that is best in life. By our 
constant exemplification of the Christian 
qualities we must more and more identify 
them in the minds of men with the Christ, 
who is their Source and Fountain-head. 
Through a genuine spirit of sacrifice and 
service breathing through all our forms 
and prayers we may be able to fulfill for 
the world our supreme function, that of 
making articulate the elemental religious 
impulses of humanity. 



"THE HOT SPOT IN 
CONSCIOUSNESS" 

We are not always acting, but we are 
always thinking. Yet we give far more 
attention to the correction of outward 
conduct than we do to the control of 
inward thought. But he who would deal 
with that which concerns his life most 
deeply must deal with his thinking, for 
here in this "great within" are the foun- 
tains from which pour forth the issues of 
our lives. 

There is an inward conflict which goes 
on in the soul of every man between his 
divided selves; a struggle in which all the 
strategy and the maneuver of a great 
campaign are carried on in miniature. 
The better self seeks to pull down the 
strongholds of every evil suggestion in 
the mind and bring every thought into 
captivity and obedience to one central 
and authoritative ideal. This eternal con- 
flict is one of the laws in the development 
of personality. We win ourselves through 

21 



22 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

patient and persistent effort. The struggle 
is not unlike that of "a man who pre- 
empts a claim on one of our Western 
prairies. At first the settler is there with 
only one point of civilization — a stake fixed 
in the ground. Then he clears out a tangle 
for his dooryard; then he builds a cabin 
large enough for his home; then he enters 
into a long, weary, unyielding struggle until 
the man is master of the wilderness. 1 

This inward struggle, this patient win- 
ning of ourselves, this bringing of every 
thought into captivity and obedience to 
one central and authoritative ideal of what 
life ought to be, is essential to any measure 
of inward peace or outward achievement. 
This is the process by which we create 
what William James has called "a hot 
spot in our consciousness." 

For lack of this mental control many 
a man has made shipwreck of his career. 
What is more common on the street than 
to hear one man say of another, "His 
mind is not on his job"? The individual 
has not developed the power of concen- 
trated thought. He has no ability to 

1 Olin A. Curtis, The Christian Faith. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 23 

arrest the drifting current of ideas that 
pours through his mind continuously, and 
direct it into certain distinct and positive 
channels. He cannot think things through, 
and so all his work is fragmentary, un- 
finished, unsatisfactory, and his mind re- 
mains undeveloped. What would we think 
of a shipmaster who set all sails and 
allowed the vessel to drive before the 
wind with no hand upon its helm to steer 
its course? What, then, must we think 
of ourselves when we remember that 
though we are the masters of a far more 
delicate and sensitive craft — the ship of 
our lives — we make so little effort to steer 
our thought into positive and useful chan- 
nels? Who knows what the coming race 
may yet achieve when at some distant 
day it has learned the power of selective 
and purposeful thinking? 

It is not the outward condition, then, 
which matters half as much as the inward 
directing of our thought. 

"One ship drives east and the other drives west 
By the very same wind that blows. 
Tis the set of the sails and not the gales 
That shows which way she goes. 



24 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Like the waves of the sea are the winds of fate, 

As we travel along through life. 
'Tis the set of the soul that determines the goal, 

And not the storm or the strife." 

It is possible for any individual to 
exercise selective power over his thoughts, 
and thus determine freely the proportions 
of his work, the quality of his character, 
and the trend of his destiny. 

Day by day we become more like the 
thoughts within us which are the real 
architects of our destinies and our dis- 
positions. To-morrow, on the streets, in 
the office, the store, the shop, the home, 
we will see and hear in the outside world 
that which corresponds to what we are 
within. We get from life what we impart 
to it or, in a word, we get ourselves 
back. 

A gentleman tells of going with two or 
three friends to attend a concert. It was 
given by a stringed quartette, the very 
essence of musical bliss, according to this 
man's opinion. After it was all over he 
drew a long breath of mingled pleasure 
and regret and turning to one of his 
friends he said, "What did you think of 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 25 

that?" And the other with a bored yawn 
replied, "That was one long squeak." 
The music lover had brought every thought 
into captivity and obedience to the ideals 
of harmony in his soul. He heard the 
outward melody which echoed in his 
mind. But the other individual had no 
music in his make-up and therefore he 
heard only the scratch of the bow and 
the twang of the wire. What we are 
within determines what we shall see and 
hear and do in the world without. 

"A sunbeam blithe, in the early day, 
Left its father and strolled away 
To find the dark. But all in vain! 
It nestled at bedtime back again. 
Drooping and tired and tearful, it cried: 
'Father, I've hunted far and wide; 
On earth lay many a gloomy spot: 
Whenever I reached it, Lo! it was not, 

" 'O, I've hunted everywhere, 
By meadows sweet, by waters fair. 
I asked the breeze, I hailed the lark, 
But, Father, I could not find the dark/ 
The father kissed his child and said : 
'Of course you couldn't, dear golden head. 
Why, 'tis a truth, as everyone knows — 
There is no dark where a sunbeam goes;' " 



26 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Now, all this has a very deep and rich 
religious significance. We cannot stop 
thinking. That is certain. If any of us have 
ever tried to do that in the night seasons 
when we wanted to go to sleep, we know 
that the effort to stop only stimulates the 
action of the mind. No, we cannot stop 
thinking, but we can exercise selective 
control over our thoughts, so that in the 
night seasons when we cannot sleep, we 
may cherish such calming, steadying ideas 
that they will bring peace and quiet to 
the feverish mind. It is always within 
our power to hold the mind to certain 
lines of thinking until we have created in 
the soul what Professor James calls "an 
habitual center of thought and of spiritual 
energy." 

It makes all the difference in the world 
whether one set of ideas or another be- 
comes the center of our mental energy. 
Here is one, for instance, who has brought 
every thought into captivity and obedience 
to certain practical and commercial stand- 
ards of thinking, so that his mind reverts 
instinctively and naturally to his invest- 
ments. They are on his mind when he 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 27 

goes to sleep at night. They come to 
him the first thing in the morning; 
his thought reverts to them continually 
throughout the day. Here is another, 
who has allowed evil suggestion and un- 
holy images to become the habitual center 
of his thinking, so that whenever his 
mind is relieved from the pressure of 
ordinary duty, it reverts instinctively to 
ideas associated with vice and lust and 
passion. "One more drink" becomes the 
dominant and authoritative center of his 
mental life, and he pursues it to the last 
stages of degradation. 

On the other hand there is the example 
of such a man as Spencer Trask, in whose 
memory there has been erected at Sara- 
toga Springs that marvelous bronze figure 
entitled "The Angel of Life." It stands 
alert upon the rock from which there 
pom's a stream of crystal water. Both 
hands are raised, the left holding the 
brimming goblet of life from which the 
overflowing water falls into the basin 
below. The figure is wonderful in its 
suggestion of spiritual life. There is not 
a sensual line about it. The face is beau- 



28 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

tiful, but with a beauty that is wistful 
and divine. Above this splendid concep- 
tion of what life may mean, are engraved 
these words: 

To the memory of Spencer Trask. His one ob- 
ject in life was to do right, to serve his fellow men. 
He gave himself abundantly to hasten the coming 
of a new and better day which with prophetic vision 
he foretold. 

This indicates what life may mean to 
one who has brought every thought into 
captivity and obedience to one central 
and authoritative ideal of righteousness 
and service. 

Now, it is equally possible for any of 
us to exercise such selective control over 
our thoughts that we can, if we choose, 
make Jesus Christ the habitual center of 
our thinking, brooding over the story of 
his life and love, absorbing both the letter 
and the spirit of his teaching, until he 
becomes the one central and dominating 
Idea within us. Instinctively the mind 
will revert to him whenever it is relieved 
from the pressure of ordinary duty. We 
will think of him the last thing at night 
and the first thing in the morning until 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 29 

he becomes unconsciously the controller 
and Master of our lives. 

It is this truth which lies behind the 
tradition of the stigmata of Saint Francis 
of Assisi. The preponderating place of the 
passion of Jesus in the consciousness of 
Francis; the mystical fervor with which 
he brooded upon his communion with 
Christ; the vision of the Crucified which 
took possession of his faculties during his 
sojourn on the Verna, quite transformed 
him into the character of Jesus. Stirred 
to the very depths of his being by the 
vision which bathed his soul, he is said 
to have perceived upon his hands and 
feet the imprint of the nails wherewith 
Christ was crucified. However that may 
be, this much is certain: he who deter- 
mines to hold Christ within him as the 
habitual center of his thought is bound 
to be transformed into his image, for, 
"we, beholding his face as in a mirror, 
are changed into the same likeness from 
glory to glory." 



A PRAYER 

Great Shepherd of the wandering sheep, 
Thou wilt not let me lose my way, 

If in my straining eye I keep 
The lifted cross of Calvary. 

Thy well-known voice I still shall hear, 
Through tangled ways of moor and fen, 

In tenderest accents, falling clear, 
To bring me to thy side again. 



30 



THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT 

Our lives are double-barreled like a 
shot-gun. On one side they are loaded 
with physical sensibilities, on the other 
with spiritual aspirations, and happy is 
the individual who can load both barrels 
in the proper proportions and fire them 
without suffering from the recoil of the 
gun. 

Or, to change the figure, our lives are 
two-surfaced. They have an outside and 
an inside, and between these two there 
is a fundamental antagonism. The world 
without us has to do with flesh and bones, 
field and forest, houses and lands, food 
and drink, tools and machinery, and all 
other visible, tangible values. The world 
within us has to do with thoughts that 
wing their way like doves in and out of 
the windows of our minds; emotions that 
rise and fall, swing and eddy, like tides 
and currents along the shores of our be- 
ing; and volitions which ripen and harden 
into convictions and purposes. 

31 



32 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

These two realms have each their own 
appetites, interests, and inclinations, and 
these are frequently contrary the one to 
the other, so that the interests of the 
flesh are inimical to the interests of the 
spirit. Herein is the source of these basic 
conflicts and contrasts of life. For exam- 
ple, the body in its hunger cries out 
"Give me bread." But the spirit has 
been known to reply, "Man cannot live 
by bread alone; give me truth." The 
body with its lust of the flesh and its 
pride of life, beholding the kingdoms of 
this world and the glory of them, demands 
power and wealth; while the spirit, caring 
for none of these things, demands charac- 
ter at whatever cost of physical comfort. 
The flesh in its great thirst says, "Give 
me a drink of stimulating liquor, let me 
taste the champagne." The spirit replies: 
"No, it will dull my vision. It will stunt 
my growth. It will rob me of soul health." 
The flesh is often weary and exhausted. 
"Let me lie down and rest," it cries. 
But the spirit answers, "No, I must finish 
this task." And so the drooping eyelids 
are forced open, the tired hands are kept 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 33 

at work. The body cries out, "I am ill, 
I am full of wounds, I am wracked with 
pain, I cannot keep up the fight." But 
the spirit answers: "III or well is a trifle, 
I must carry on. Come with me over 
the top." 

In a word, the body is reluctant, hes- 
itant, cowardly, while the spirit is ad- 
venturous and daring. 

These are only a few examples of the 
ceaseless conflict which goes on within the 
soul of every man. 

Some of us have seen in the Field Mu- 
seum at Chicago a marble group repre- 
senting two wrestlers contending with 
each other. On closer inspection the two 
figures are seen to be identical, so that 
it was scarcely necessary for the sculptor 
to engrave below, "I feel two natures 
struggling within me." 

All the romance, tragedy, pathos, and 
even the comedy of human life, are based 
upon this eternal conflict, due to the 
clashing interests of these warring wills, 
these conflicting appetites, these opposing 
streams of tendency. It underlies all the 
world's greatest literature, art, and music. 



34 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

It is the background of those primeval 
stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It 
is embodied in the tragedies of the Greek 
dramatists. It is the inexhaustible theme 
of Dante and Milton and Shakespeare. 
No one has ever portrayed it more vividly 
than George Eliot, in her wonderful 
analysis of human nature. It has given 
depth and meaning to the world's great- 
est pictures. It is the clue to the inter- 
pretation of the confused and blotted 
pages of human history. It has deter- 
mined the characteristics of races and 
cults. 

Here, on the one hand, is the Greek; 
sunny, light-hearted, following the line 
of least resistance; putting the emphasis 
upon outward, physical well-being; giving 
free rein to appetite and inclination. Here, 
on the other hand, is the Hebrew, learning 
the stern lesson of restraint, putting the 
emphasis upon the inward life of the 
spirit, disciplining himself in the interests 
of his soul. Here, again, is the Epicurean, 
living the life of sensations, seeking satis- 
faction principally in outward sources of 
delight. Over against him is the Stoic, 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 35 

spurning outward comforts and encourag- 
ing that inward mastery of his spirit over 
every outward circumstance. 

The same basic conflict underlies the 
great outward struggles between races and 
nations, for in the last analysis these 
contests are all the reflection of what goes 
on in miniature within each soul. Re- 
cently the world was transformed into a 
vast armed camp. On one side a group of 
empires whose emphasis has been for a 
succession of years upon outward efficiency 
and external achievement. They wor- 
shiped the gods of physical force and 
material value. On the other side a group 
of free governments, whose emphasis, 
while not always consistently so, is mainly 
upon moral values, justice and honor being 
held in their eyes more important than 
territorial gains or the subjection of feeble 
peoples. In France, especially, the soul 
of the nation rose to great heights 
of heroism. In spite of outward ruin and 
physical disaster, the spirit of France has 
been triumphant. It is strikingly sug- 
gested in these lines, entitled 



86 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Vive La France! 

"France is dying." — Hindenburg 

"If France is dying, she dies as day 

In the splendor of noon, sun-aureoled. 
If France is dying, then youth is gray 
And steel is soft and flame is cold. 

France cannot die! France cannot die! 

"If France is dying, she dies as love 

When a mother dreams of her child to be. 
If France is dying, then God above 
Died with his Son upon the tree. 

France cannot die! France cannot die! 

"If France is dying, true manhood dies, 
Freedom and justice, all golden things. 
If France is dying, then life were wise 
To borrow of death such immortal wings. 
France cannot die! France cannot die!" 

We are all agreed that both body and 
spirit are essential to life. There must be 
a physical basis for the spiritual achieve- 
ment; and there must be spiritual vision 
before it can be realized in outward form. 
The vital and important question which 
every individual must face and settle for 
himself is the question of preeminence. 
Which is to be the master? Which is 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 37 

to determine his character and destiny, 
his body or his spirit? 

The great body of human thought, of 
which the Bible is the text-book, of which 
the Old Testament prophets were the 
spokesmen, and of which Christianity was 
the fruit and flower, has always insisted 
as its cardinal teaching that the inner 
life of the spirit must dominate the out- 
ward life of the flesh. The soul must be 
victorious over circumstance, for it is here, 
in this great within, that the issues of life 
are to be determined. The ancient leaders 
of Israel repeatedly reminded their nation 
that inward rightness of attitude toward 
God and toward one another was the sole 
condition of outward national prosperity. 
The psalmists insisted that even amidst 
the wreck and ruin of outward conditions 
nothing was really lost if the soul main- 
tained its trust in God. "God is our 
refuge and strength, a very present help 
in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, 
though the earth be removed, and though 
the mountains be carried into the midst 
of the sea; though the waters thereof roar 
and be troubled, though the mountains 



38 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

shake with the swelling thereof. There 
is a river, the streams whereof shall make 
glad the city of God, the holy place of 
the tabernacles of the most High. God 
is in the midst of her; she shall not be 
moved: God shall help her, and that 
right early." 

Again they declared, with the certainty 
of a great conviction: "Some trust in 
chariots, and some in horses; but we 
will remember the name of the Lord our 
God. They are brought down and fallen; 
but we are risen, and stand upright." 

When Christ came, he made this the 
burden of his message. With him the 
soul is supreme. It is the one thing about 
us that is most worth while. To Nicode- 
mus he made it clear that only spiritual 
insight, born of inward and hidden con- 
tact with God, could unlock for any man 
the meaning of life. To the tired woman 
by the well-curb in Samaria, thinking only 
of her physical thirst, he made it clear 
that there was an inward thirst of spirit 
which it was far more necessary to quench; 
and that it was possible for her to have 
within her a well of water of which she 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 39 

might drink and never thirst. To the 
busy housekeeper who was intent on the 
accomplishment of many outward tasks, 
he said: "Martha, Martha, thou art care- 
ful and troubled about many things: but 
one thing is needful: and Mary hath 
chosen that good part, which shall not 
be taken away from her." 

To the Pharisees, whose attention was 
all given to the proper fulfillment of 
forms and ceremonies, he said: "Ye are 
like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed 
appear beautiful outwardly, but are within 
full of dead men's bones." 

And to the rich man who pulled down 
his barns to build greater; who counted 
his substance with pride and said to him- 
self: "Thou hast much goods laid up 
for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
drink, and be merry," he said: "Thou 
fool, this night thy soul shall be required 
of thee." 

He not Only talked about this great 
truth, but he lived it so emphatically that 
all recognized in him a unique and su- 
perior soul. It looked out of his eyes. 
It spoke in his voice. The weak and 



40 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

feeble felt it, for strength and healing 
flowed from him as from a fountain. 
Those who abused and attacked him felt 
it. They knew instinctively that he was 
superior even to their physical force. He 
mastered every set of circumstances. He 
always knew just what to do and what 
to say. He was never caught off his 
guard nor disconcerted. He never had to 
go back to correct himself. Soldiers 
finally put chains upon his body and 
held him under guard, but they had no 
power to crush his soul. Even in death 
he was triumphant. His spirit was un- 
conquerable. 

This power of the spirit in the mastery 
of circumstance does not come except 
through toil and struggle. It was out of 
the conflict in the wilderness that Jesus 
"returned in the power of the spirit into 
Galilee." 

So it is with all men. When physical 
comforts are multiplied; when the body 
is well fed and securely housed; when 
fortune pours its golden store into our 
waiting hands; when peace lies like a 
shaft of light across our path, the soul 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 41 

shrinks and shrivels within the house of 
flesh; the spirit is stifled with luxury and 
ease. But when our path enters the 
wilderness and we are stripped of the 
physical props on which our spirits leaned, 
then the soul becomes again upstanding. 
It asserts itself. 

Frequently a crystal is formed in the 
heart of a granite bowlder, and in order 
to bring its shining facets to the light 
nature submerges it, breaks it with the 
force of the storm, and polishes it by 
abrasion with stones and rubbish of the 
sea. Thus, by contact with pain, by 
friction with life, the soul of man is pol- 
ished to the point of triumphant beauty. 

Until that moment of spiritual suprem- 
acy arrives we miss entirely the significance 
of the outward world in which we live. 
The only real value attaching to external 
conditions is based upon our inward ca- 
pacity for appropriating and using them 
as channels for the expression of spiritual 
ideas. 



THE PERSONALIZING OF LIFE 

In the teaching of Jesus the soul is 
supreme. It is the unit of all values. 
It is the one thing about us most worth 
while. It is the one thing which will 
survive the wreck of all earthly condi- 
tions, the one thing whose loss would be 
irreparable. 

Now, the ancient conception of the soul 
was that of a ghost or spirit, something 
vague, shadowy, and unsubstantial, more 
or less dependent upon the functions of 
the body. But we have changed our con- 
ception of the nature of the inner life. 
We have come to see that the soul is 
active, masterful, militant. It is no longer 
the body that has a soul; it is the soul 
that has a body. 

All this we are accustomed to sum up 
in the language of our own time in that 
word — the most richly suggestive word in 
the English tongue — personality. All that 
I am as a man, all that is unique and 
original in my life as separate and dis- 

42 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 43 

tinct from every other life, gathers itself 
together in that one personal pronoun, 
"I." Back of everything else in life, back 
of the work you do in the world's work- 
shop, back of the tools you handle, back 
of the products you turn out, lies that 
subtle, illusive something which we call 
our personal consciousness. It gathers it- 
self together and in royal kingliness of 
tone, declares, "I am, I feel, I think, I 
will," thus asserting its own separate 
existence as over against all the world 
beside. 

Personality becomes, therefore, a very 
sacred thing. It is the sanctuary of our 
inmost souls. It is what we really are. 
Therefore we modestly conceal it from the 
prying gaze of curious men. It is a rare 
thing for a man to reveal his inmost soul. 
When he does by word of mouth or written 
confession a thrill of awe and reverence 
steals over us. This is why it is that 
sometimes in conversation with a friend, 
when a burst of unusual intimacy has 
laid bare the secrets of his heart, you are 
embarrassed, scarcely knowing what to 
say; you feel instinctively that you are 



44 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

on the threshold of a human spirit. And 
if to-day we do not talk as much about 
the soul and its experience as our fathers 
did, it may be due to a deepening convic- 
tion of its sacredness and significance. 

The soul is made up of ten thousand 
fragments. We gather ourselves together 
from every quarter. We pick ourselves 
up along the way. George Macdonald's 
catechism of babyhood beautifully ex- 
presses this: 

"Where did you come from, baby dear? 
Out of the everywhere into the here. 

"Where did you get those eyes so blue? 
Out of the sky as I came through. 

"Where did you get that little tear? 
I found it waiting when I got here. 

"What makes your forehead so smooth and high? 
A soft hand stroked it as I came by. 

"Where did you get those arms and hands? 
Love made itself into bonds and bands." 

Thus it is from the heaven above and 
from the earth beneath. A patch of blue 
sky, a ray of sunlight, a passing shadow, 
an hour of joy, an hour of pain. Thus 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 45 

the fragments of life come to us, and the 
problem of existence is the weaving of 
all this various material into one sym- 
metrical and harmonious whole; personal- 
izing every fragment of it; giving expres- 
sion through it to the highest and divinest 
ideals; finding ourselves in it; in a word, 
making life soulful. 

Some men have possessed to such a 
remarkable degree this power of project- 
ing their own souls into their environment 
and personalizing life with such intensity 
that they have fairly stamped themselves 
upon the hills and valleys where once 
they walked. Who ever goes to the lake 
district of England without thinking of 
Wordsworth? Who ever walks along the 
banks of the Doon without thinking of 
Bobbie Burns? Who ever rides through 
the streets of Concord without thinking 
of Emerson? 

Jesus possessed this power of personal- 
izing life in a supreme degree. He so 
filled the world with himself, he so charged 
human experience with his ideals, that 
everything has been different since he 
came among us. Why, one night he dined 



46 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

with a company of his friends in an upper 
room in Jerusalem; and he took that com- 
mon and familiar act of eating with one's 
neighbor and so charged it with the spirit 
of his life, so made it expressive of his 
own ideal, that ever since, when men and 
women come together to break the white 
bread and sip the sweet red wine, they 
remember Jesus Christ. One day he was 
crucified upon a Roman gibbet. The 
mere touch of his life upon this ugly 
instrument of torture so transformed it 
with new meaning and made it inter- 
pretive of his own great spirit of sacrifice 
and devotion, that to this hour we cannot 
look upon a cross without thinking of 
Jesus Christ. 

It is this fact which gives value and 
significance to all the world's work. For 
this reason every relic of human art and 
handicraft is of inestimable value to 
society. We treasure the flint spearhead 
and the broken bit of pottery and the 
stone implement of an early age, because 
in these products of primitive ingenuity 
we can read something of the skill, the 
genius, and the character of the prehis- 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 47 

toric workman, of the artisan of the long 
ago. It is this which gives value and 
interest to every work of art. Every line 
chiseled in the marble is a revelation of 
the sculptor's thought. Every patch of 
color on the canvas unveils an artist's soul. 

It is this also which gives significance 
to our relation to all material things: 
wealth, property, houses, and lands. Your 
house — what is it but a shell until you 
have personalized it, filling it with your- 
self, storing it with the books you love, 
the pictures you admire, and the draperies 
which your taste has chosen? Not until 
it becomes expressive of yourself can your 
house be said to be your home. 

And your wealth — what is it but so 
much accumulated and burdensome rub- 
bish unless through it you are able to 
give a larger expression to your best self; 
unless you can somehow make it inter- 
pretive of your noblest ideals through 
service, kindliness, and sympathy? We 
may put it down as an axiom that when 
we increase wealth beyond our power of 
spiritualizing it, it becomes a curse and a 
burden rather than a blessing. "Beloved, 



48 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

I wish above all things that thou mayest 
prosper and be in health, even as thy soul 
prospereth." 

In the same way all experience must be 
made soulful. Education, travel, adven- 
ture, joy, sorrow, friendship — what does 
it all amount to but the confused kaleido- 
scope of a purposeless existence, unless we 
can so relate it all to our deepest life that 
it will become significant. Take the one 
item of travel. There are those who 
return from journeys over seas with souls 
which have expanded broadly in the light 
of new scenes. They have found the 
earth a parable richly suggestive of their 
own inmost experience. They have found 
it crammed with God and truth and 
beauty. But there are others who come 
wearily home from globe-trotting pilgrim- 
ages with only a confused mass of impres- 
sions, unrelated and meaningless save for 
the passing pleasure of an hour. 

In the same way all truth must be 
personalized. You cannot absorb truth 
ready-made. You cannot buy truth put 
up in convenient packages as one might 
buy tea and sugar from a grocer's store. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 49 

A convenient, ready-made, propositional 
theology is of small value to any free 
spirit. No truth is ours until we have 
made it our own hard-earned possession; 
until it has been filtered through our own 
souls and been given the stamp of our 
own experience. The teacher may write 
the answer to the problem upon the black- 
board and the pupil may recognize at 
once the truth he has been seeking through 
long hours of study, but that truth does 
not become his own simply because the 
teacher has put it within his reach. Not 
until it has passed step by step through 
his own thought process; not until he 
has solved the problem for himself, does 
it become his truth. 

In that spiritually suggestive story The 
Wood-carver of Lympus, the hero is a 
poor, broken man, whose dream of life 
has been shattered by misfortune. He is 
groping blindly through his pain for some 
meaning in the mystery. Hanzel, a Swiss 
wood-carver, sends him the gift of a 
crucifix from beyond the sea. The man 
seeks to copy it, and when the work is 
done he holds them in his hand for com- 



50 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

parison, and then he writes in his journal: 
"Something has gotten into the face of 
my Christ which is not in the face of 
Hanzel's Christ. A man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." 

Yes, it could not be otherwise. Through 
the travail of his own soul he had given 
to Christ his own interpretation and so 
it must be with each of us. I may talk 
to you of the supremacy of Jesus and of 
his wondrous meaning for my life, but it 
will have no significance for you until 
somewhere you fall in with the Master 
for yourself. He will look suddenly out 
upon you from the pages of the Book or 
from the eyes of a friend. Your soul will 
find in him a meaning of its own. There 
will be something different in your inter- 
pretation of him than there is in mine. 
That will be inevitable. Only thus can 
he become your Christ, your own hard- 
earned personal possession. 

Now, it is this individual who has 
learned to trust the supremacy of his 
soul, who has unified all life and expe- 
rience through the interpretation of his 
own spirit, who is the real master of cir- 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 51 

cumstances, the real conqueror of life. 
He is no longer debased by poverty or 
discouraged by failure. He is no longer 
afraid of to-morrow. He is no longer killed 
by death. Whatever storms may beat 
upon the outward coasts of his experience, 
his soul within is like a quiet garden, full 
of shelter and of fountains. Fear has no 
torments for him. Great thoughts are 
his companions and he can cry far more 
intelligently than did Henley: 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul." 



THE TIRED EARTH 

The earth is tired, 
And groans and travails in her pain, 
And reels beneath the awful strain 
Of all her centuries of strife, 
Her crushing weight of human life. 

She quakes in agonizing throes 
Of longing for the end of woes, 
And labors for her own new birth, 
Poor battle-scarred and ruined earth. 

Still the calm stars in silence glow 
Above the turbulence below, 
And steadily the planets roll 
Around the burning central soul. 

And hearts are tired. 
O weary, weary is the way, 
Of desert pathways day by day. 
And feet are bleeding, bruised, and sore 
With struggling toward the shining shore. 

How long before the sunlit hills 
Shall rise above these crowding ills, 
And we shall hear the restful flow 
Of Canaan's river gliding slow? 

52 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 53 

Faint not, but watch, and work, and pray. 
A voice within me seems to say, 
Though earth from her foundation move, 
Thou art secure, for "God is Love." 



THE HOUSE NOT MADE 
WITH HANDS 

There are always in every age a few 
unworldly souls who look with profound 
contempt upon all forms of outward 
achievement. The expenditure of one's 
energies along any line of worldly effort 
seems to them a sinful waste of time and 
strength. They believe the only secret of 
peace is to be found in withdrawing the 
mind from all earthly cares and material 
interests. 

This philosophy of quietism has never 
exactly commended itself to the common 
sense of mankind. It is hard for us to 
understand why there should be put 
within us such a passion for doing things, 
if the things we do amount to nothing 
after all. Moreover, there is an unde- 
niable sense of satisfaction in seeing one's 
inward thought take shape in outward 
forms. To make a house with one's hands; 
to gather together various material, brick 
and stone and mortar, and see them grow 

54 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 55 

into a building of strength and symmetry, 
is to experience the real joy of creative 
power. 

The ordinary child who has a spark of 
originality in him will care far more for 
a rude toy of his own contrivance than 
for all the painted products of the toy 
shop which you may bring to him. The 
healthy child will frequently turn away 
from his painted playthings, go out into 
the back yard and gather together ragged 
ends of boards, rusty nails, bits of broken 
pottery and a piece of old rag carpet. 
He will turn upon this rubbish the force 
of his own ingenuity and out of it he 
will build a rude structure. Illuminated 
by his imagination, it becomes a palace 
of marble and of alabaster, adorned by 
golden plate and lighted by crystal chande- 
liers. Observe with what pride of owner- 
ship and with what joy of creative power 
he will take his father by the hand and 
lead him forth to view this product of 
his creative genius. 

Now, "men are only boys grown tall." 
The material in which they work is some- 
what more refined and costly, but the 



56 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

principle is just the same. It must be a 
real satisfaction for a business man to 
see an industry springing from a seed- 
thought of his mind, growing under his 
hand until it becomes a commercial enter- 
prise of large proportions reaching out in 
many directions with elaborate and effi- 
cient organization. Thus to see one's 
inward thought take shape in outward 
forms of industry is to experience the real 
joy of creative power. 

There must be satisfaction for an archi- 
tect or a builder to see his inward plan, 
carefully wrought out in the silence of 
his own mind, take shape in growing 
wall, flying buttress, in springing arch and 
massive tower until the whole combines 
in a unity of form which pleases the eye 
of the beholder. Christopher Wren, the 
designer of Saint Paul's Cathedral, lies 
buried under the choir of that noble 
building, and on a panel over the north 
door some of us have read in Latin that 
famous inscription: "If you seek his monu- 
ment, look around you." And it is no 
mean monument for any man, and no 
small tribute to his genius, to be able 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 57 

thus to realize his inward thought in 
outward forms of beauty and of strength. 

But, after all, the philosophy of quiet- 
ism is not altogether without reason. 
There is some basis for that historic con- 
tempt for all forms of outward achieve- 
ment. They are not permanent. They 
do not last. The earthly house of our 
tabernacle is being continually dissolved. 
These structures of brick and stone and 
mortar are forever crumbling, worn by 
the elements, weakened by age, disinte- 
grated by the action of sun and rain and 
wind. This is borne in upon one with 
deep conviction when he stands among 
the ruins of Old World cities and looks 
up at broken tower and crumbling wall, 
where once power dwelt in splendor. He 
hears his own voice echo back from empty 
and deserted halls, once crowded by the 
earth's elect. He sees the outward gran- 
deur of ancient civilization blown like dust 
along the aisles of time. 

Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, is 
represented as engaging in this soliloquy: 
"I made me great works; I builded me 
houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me 



58 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

gardens and orchards. ... I made me pools 
of water, to water therewith the wood. . . . 
I had great possessions of great and of 
small cattle. ... I gathered me also silver 
and gold, and the peculiar treasure of 
kings and of the provinces: I gat me 
men singers and women singers, and the 
delights of the sons of men, as musical 
instruments, and that of all sorts. . . . 
I withheld not my heart from any joy. . . . 
Then I looked on all the works that my 
hands had wrought, . . . and, behold, it 
was all vanity and vexation of spirit." 

Jesus felt it. He was not tinctured 
with the pessimism of Solomon, but he 
saw the insignificance and feebleness of 
everything outward in contrast with those 
more real spiritual values which he em- 
phasized. It was during the last week 
of his life. He had spent the day teaching 
the people in the temple and went out 
each evening to spend the night with his 
friends in Bethany. He and his disciples 
passed through the gates of the temple 
and looked up at the massive masonry 
which supported its structure. His friends, 
filled with commendable pride in this 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 59 

queenly city of their nation, exclaimed: 
"Master, see what manner of stones and 
what buildings are here!" But Jesus was 
not impressed. He was thinking of things 
that lay beneath the surface and of the 
corruption that even then was eating out 
the heart of a nation, and he answered: 
"Seest thou these great buildings? There 
shall not be left one stone upon another, 
that shall not be thrown down." 

Men have felt so keenly the perishable- 
ness of their outward work that they have 
exhausted every means of making it per- 
manent. They build pyramids, carve their 
names in the living rock, erect splendid 
monuments and temples, but all these 
memorials have felt at last the tooth of 
time. A branch of the National Arts Club 
called The Modern Historic Records Asso- 
ciation has undertaken to secure records 
of the lives and work of certain famous 
men, to be transferred to imperishable 
material and then placed in some inde- 
structible shelter. For this purpose a ma- 
terial called condensite is to be used. It 
is said to be everlasting, but one has a 
lurking fancy that the ages to come will 



60 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

mock at all this. Nothing outward is per- 
manent. 

What, then, does remain? What is per- 
manent? Just one thing. The unseen 
framework of facts and forces which lies 
back of all outward forms. What is 
permanent in your home? Is it the four 
walls of brick and mortar? No, the only 
thing of permanent value is the house 
within the house, a house of sympathy, 
of love, of mutual trust and understanding, 
a house not made with hands. Nothing 
else can make your house a home. 

What is permanent in your business? 
The tall building you have erected to 
contain it? The shelves laden with 
merchandise, the elaborate organization 
through whose agency it is carried on? 
No, again it is the house within the 
house; a house of credit, a house of honor, 
trust, and confidence, a house not made 
with hands. And if this unseen building 
is not there, your outward structure will 
not abide. 

The seers and prophets of the world 
have sought to make this clear. Jesus 
sat one day on the edge of a fountain near 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 61 

the city of Samaria, and there he fell 
into conversation with a woman whose 
trust was in outward forms. She pointed 
upward with pride to the Samaritan tem- 
ple, which they could see glistening in the 
sun on the summit of Mount Gerizim 
and declared that there was the place to 
worship God. But Jesus replied that the 
place had nothing to do with it, that it 
mattered little whether one worshiped God 
in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim. God 
was a Spirit, and those who worship him 
must worship him in spirit and in truth. 
Paul, the apostle, suggested the same 
truth when he stood on Mars' Hill in 
Athens, surrounded by temples and build- 
ings representing the highest creative 
genius of man, and declared that God, 
the supreme Reality, did not dwell in 
temples made with hands, nor was he 
worshiped with men's hands, as though 
he needed anything. 

One of the arrogant leaders of the 
French Revolution is represented as saying 
to a devout peasant, "We will pull down 
your steeples, and then there will be no 
longer any cause for your superstitions.' 5 



m FLUTES OF SILENCE 

"Yes," replied the peasant, "but you 
cannot put out the stars." 

They could pull down the churches, but 
they could not pull down the house not 
made with hands. 

The institutional forms of Christianity 
may change, its creeds and systems per- 
ish, its temples come and go, but the 
house not made with hands abides, for 
the real Church of Christ is not a build- 
ing. It cannot be burned by fire nor 
destroyed by flood. It consists of the 
loyal and devoted spirit of obedient men 
and women who have given themselves to 
do the will of God. Slowly throughout 
the universe, said Phillips Brooks, this real 
temple of God is being built, and when 
any soul kindles with the fire of this deeper 
life and catches the vision of its true 
spiritual relation to the Infinite, that soul 
is caught up like a living stone and built 
into the growing walls of the house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 



THE QUIET OF UNQUESTIONING 
FAITH 

On the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel 
is that great fresco of "The Last Judg- 
ment," perhaps the most elaborate effort 
which Michael Angelo ever undertook. 
It is a work of agony and mystery. 
There can be no calm enjoyment of 
it. It is only slowly that one can make 
out the artist's plan at all. The dark 
colors of the gloomy background are 
relieved by the white of unclothed and 
tormented bodies, writhing in the throes 
of a mortal conflict, struggling to free 
themselves from the clutches of demons 
who seek to pull them down into the 
horrors of hell, while muscular angels reach 
down from above to lift them up. It is 
the reflection of a mind struggling with 
the problems of pain and of evil, of man 
and God. The simplicity of faith has 
departed and with it the serenity of the 
soul. It is a work that belongs to the 
age of struggle and of doubt. 

63 



64 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

In striking contrast is the tiny little 
chapel of Nicholas V, which opens off the 
Constantine Chamber in the same great 
palace of the Vatican. 1 It is a welcome 
refuge from the crowds of curious sight- 
seers. In its soft and obscure light one 
sees some of the choicest work of Fra 
Angelico, the saintly monk who painted 
for the love of God. He has adorned the 
walls with scenes from the lives of Saint 
Stephen and Saint Lawrence. The figures 
are all in calm and easeful repose. There 
is no indication of passion, strife, or 
tumult. The quiet faces of all Angelico's 
saints are full of peace and piety. Indeed, 
this is the source of our chief criticism of 
his work. His figures seem too much like 
perfect dolls, unreal and passionless, But 
as one comes to know Angelico's work 
better he begins to see that this artist 
could express every shade of emotion, 
always leaving upon us the impression 
that it is the emotion of a soul mastered 
by the quiet of unquestioning faith. 

It was in the year 1387, in the beautiful 



x This contrast is suggested in a chapter of The 
Potter's Wheel, by John Watson. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 65 

valley of the Mugello, only a few miles 
from Florence, and in the home of a 
peasant farmer, that there was born a 
little lad named Guido. Just about one 
hundred years before, and not far distant 
from this very spot, another barefooted 
little peasant boy was found sketching 
his sheep upon a stone. This was Giotto, 
who was destined to become the father of 
Italian art. But in the period of which 
we write, Giotto had been many years 
in his grave and the Renaissance was in 
the full swing of its glowing pride. Every- 
where there was an intense enthusiasm for 
the revival of classic art. Everyone, from 
the pope upon his throne to the clerk in 
the counting-house, was a lover and a 
judge of art. It is not surprising that in 
the glow of this universal enthusiasm for 
beauty and culture, young Guido should 
have felt himself called to be an artist. 
His youth was spent in the study and 
the practice of his craft. 

About this time came the great Do- 
minican preacher, traveling from one end 
of Italy to another, speaking in the towns 
and cities and urging the people to a 



66 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

holier and a nobler life. His eloquence 
appealed to many of the best youth of 
the land. Among those who applied for 
admission to his order were Guido and 
his younger brother Benedetto. After a 
year's novitiate, they were admitted to 
the Dominican Convent on the slopes of 
Fiesole, which overlooked the fair City of 
the Lily and the Arno hurrying toward 
the sea. It will be remembered that the 
Dominican order encouraged the develop- 
ment of both literature and art. In this 
quiet retreat, then, far from the ignoble 
strife of his fellows, the young monk de- 
voted himself with tireless energy to his 
craft. 

He was not troubled by a desire for 
money or fame or worldly power. In- 
deed, Vassari tells us, that at one time 
the pope decided to appoint him arch- 
bishop of Florence, but he declined, hav- 
ing no desire for immediate and temporary 
rewards which most men seek so eagerly. 
He regarded his work from a profoundly 
religious point of view. Just as his 
brethren, the preaching friars, were sent 
out into the world to edify the holy and 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 67 

convince the sinner, so he felt it was his 
mission to preach through his art, remind- 
ing men of the life and love of Jesus 
Christ their Lord, and directing their 
attention toward high and holy things. 
It was his custom to take his brush in 
hand only after prayer and meditation, 
and there are some who tell us that he 
never painted the face of Christ except 
upon his knees, and never represented the 
agony of the crucifixion that his cheeks 
were not wet with quiet tears. 

In his middle life he and his comrades 
of the order made a solemn entrance into 
Florence and took up their abode in the 
reconsecrated buildings of the Convent of 
San Marco. These were at length repaired 
and beautified at considerable expense, 
and Fra Angelico — for so he was known 
among the Dominicans — was given the 
task of decorating the walls of the cloisters 
and cells. One cannot doubt that the 
commission was fulfilled with loving dili- 
gence. To me there is no place in Florence 
which can compare in interest with this 
old convent of San Marco. Its very name 
suggests the crowding memories of great 



68 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

men like Antonino, the good prior, who 
afterward became archbishop of the city 
and would have none of the luxury and 
finery of his predecessors, but turned the 
palace lawns into gardens planted with 
vegetables for the poor; and Fra Bar- 
tolomeo, another of these artist monks who 
has enriched the world with his visions 
of religious truth; and Savonarola, who 
paced these cool and quiet cloisters, his 
deep-set eyes burning with fiery indigna- 
tion against the evils of his time. 

A spirit of quiet peace broods over the 
old convent as if it were a garden full of 
shelter and of fountains. No sooner in- 
side than you find the hand of Fra Angelico 
upon the cloister walls. There stands 
Christ, a weary pilgrim, leaning heavily 
upon his staff, a tired look in his sad eyes, 
as though he had just come dead-spent 
from toiling up and down the world; and 
here are two Dominican brethren who 
advance to the doorway of the convent 
with outstretched arms of welcome, and 
in their quiet, kindly faces there is the 
promise of the warmth of their hospitality 
and love. One cannot doubt that the 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 69 

good Master, thus so warmly welcomed 
at the door, was a constant guest in this 
quiet house of prayer. Did he not walk 
and talk with these pure-minded men as 
they paced the cloisters, until their hearts 
burned within them? Did he not com- 
mune with them in the night seasons in 
their silent cells? Was he not an unseen 
Guest at their table as they gathered for 
their simple meals in the refectory hall? 

Yonder is a door which opens into the 
chapter hall, and there we find our- 
selves in the presence of the most elab- 
orate work which Angelico undertook — 
the great fresco of the Crucifixion. There 
is in it none of the passionate tragedy and 
repulseful pain which is so often pictured 
in this event. It is full of majesty and 
calmness. Every degree of grief and 
sorrow is pictured on the faces of the 
saints and martyrs who are grouped about 
the cross, but it is a sorrow too deep for 
violent expression. We gaze our fill upon 
it until the warm tears unconsciously brim 
the eyes. And then we climb the stairs; 
perhaps enter the long corridor, out of 
which open the tiny little cells where the 



70 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

brethren slept and prayed, each one in 
the presence of a picture painted by the 
artist monk, suggesting an event con- 
nected with the life and love and death 
of Christ. 

At the far end of the corridor we lean 
against the wall and gaze a long time at 
the fresco of the Annunciation, perhaps 
the finest of them all. It is full of the 
breadth, the simplicity, and the calmness 
which befits a high and elevated religious 
art. The lines are severe but graceful; 
the color scheme is tender and pure. 
Daisies lift their heads in the green grass 
beyond the portico, and garlands of roses 
are relieved against the dark-green of the 
cypress trees. It is the cool of the even- 
tide, and Mary listens with calm sub- 
mission to the announcement of the celes- 
tial visitor, whose wings still shimmer 
with the iridescence of the sky. It would 
be impossible to feel anything but calmed 
and steadied in the presence of that scene. 
Indeed, the whole place seems like a quiet 
backwater away from the foam and the 
spray of the roaring current of our lives. 

If you are ever worn and weary with 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 71 

the ceaseless fury of these feverish days, 
I bid you go to Florence and there in the 
old Convent of San Marco spend hours 
and days in the presence of these frescoes, 
until you have learned the secret of their 
piety and peace; breathe in the atmos- 
phere of that still place until the fever 
and the fret are gone and you have found 
once more the heart of a little child 
possessed by the quiet of an unquestioning 
faith. 



"HE KNOWETH THE WAY THAT 
WE TAKE" 

O Heart, we will no longer question, 

You and I, 
Of all the strange, perplexing things that 
lie 

About our destiny, 

Saying, alas! we tarried here too long 

To grasp our fate, 
And there we failed in patient hope to 
wait 

The opening of a gate. 

That would have led to greener pastures, 

Where cool rivers flowed, 
And golden sands upon their margin 
glowed, 

And smooth the road; 

Winding away among the sheltering trees, 

Where perfumed breeze 
Swept in from distant seas, 

With song of peace. 

72 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 73 

Nay, Heart, but let us make, 

Our refuge here, 
He knoweth the way we take, 

Through smile or tear, 
In sunbright ways, 

Or deserts lone and drear. 

Here resting let us make 

Nor moan nor cry, 
Though all the world go by, 
Hushing all passionate pain 

Because of the unattained, 
For His most blessed sake, 
Who knoweth the way we take. 



PRAYER AS A FORCE 

Not long ago, from the South portico 
of the White House, President Wilson 
stood before a switchboard and directed 
the movements of a flight of airplanes 
flying over the Potomac River several 
miles away. He did this by speaking into 
what is called a Radio Telephone which 
conveyed his words to the aviators in 
the machines. They were so far away 
that they were hardly visible but they 
circled, swung, and dived at his command. 

Any day an American broker or business 
man may send a cable to London. He 
writes his message on a bit of yellow 
paper, hands it to a messenger boy, who 
in turn carries it to the telegraph office. 
The operator clicks for a few minutes on 
his instruments and hangs the yellow slip 
on a hook beside his desk. The written 
message does not leave the room, but 
almost instantly an operator in London 
receives and understands the word of the 

74 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 75 

broker which involves the transfer of per- 
haps millions of dollars. 

Here is a building dark and silent. A 
man approaches it, opens the door and 
turns a switch. Instantly the building 
glows with light; wheels begin to turn 
and machines are in operation. 

How are all these modern miracles 
accomplished? Not even the wisest can 
give us a detailed satisfactory explanation. 
Science has its theories and assumptions 
but all we really know is this — Man has 
discovered certain laws and conditions by 
which the forces of nature operate. Con- 
forming his own activities to these laws 
and fulfilling to the letter these conditions, 
he finds that he can accomplish certain 
transformations of energy into light and 
heat and power. 

Our world is fairly crammed with energy. 
There is power in the shining of the sun, 
in the lift of the moon, in the swing of 
the tides, in the rushing of water. There 
is power in the growth of seeds so that if 
you are ingenious enough to measure it, 
you might discover that the common yel- 
low squash in your garden, by the silent 



76 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

push of its growth, is capable of lifting 
five thousand pounds. One can rake up 
electricity enough almost anywhere to 
light a city or run a factory. 

And then there are moral and spiritual 
forces, less tangible but none the less 
powerful. We recognize them by "In- 
audible voices that call us, and we go; 
invisible hands restrain us, and we stay; 
forces unseen by our dull senses sway our 
wavering will." 

Indeed, these invisible moral energies 
are of the greater importance. Without 
them material forces are of little value. 
Germany reckoned without these moral 
forces to her sorrow. By all the laws of 
physical energy, Germany ought to have 
won the war hands down in the first 
ninety days of the struggle. But one 
element was left out of the calculations. 
Germany's only moral force was the pride 
and confidence inspired by her material 
forces. As certainly as England blockaded 
her coasts and prevented the entrance of 
food supplies, so Germany blockaded her- 
self morally by isolating herself from the 
eternal principles of justice, righteousness, 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 77 

and mercy, which are far more powerful 
in the long run than any accumulation 
of physical force. Many a man in public 
life has made tragic discovery of this fact. 
Supposing himself to be intrenched be- 
hind wealth and influence, he has been 
blown from his pedestal by the scorching 
breath of public opinion, which all the 
money in the world is powerless to resist. 

Prayer is the method by which the 
vast resources of spiritual energy can be 
tapped and utilized. We are not accus- 
tomed to think of prayer in this way. 
We conceive of it usually as a mere passive 
experience of communion with the Unseen. 
Such, indeed, prayer is to the comfort 
and peace of many a lonely soul. It was 
said of Enoch Arden, "Had not his poor 
heart talked with Him who being every- 
where lets none who talk with him seem 
all alone, surely the man had died of soli- 
tude. 55 

Just as the antennae of the wireless 
apparatus reach out into space to receive 
the impulses of the ether that they may be 
transmitted and recorded, so prayer is the 
wireless apparatus of the soul, listening in 



78 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

the silence for the voices that come to it 
out of the unseen. 

But prayer is more than communion 
with the Invisible. It is also a cable 
which transmits energy. It is a switch 
which releases power. The unreality of 
prayer to many of us is due to the fact 
that we think of it only as a form of words 
to be identified with stated times and 
places. We conceive of it only as a mode 
of worship or as a passive emotional 
experience. It may be this, but it is 
much more than this. 

Prayer in its deepest meaning is an 
expression of what we are and of what 
we most desire. It is the settled hunger 
of our hearts. It is what we want more 
than anything else in the world. It is 
what we are daily seeking for, asking for, 
"it is our demand from life." It may 
express itself in the words of our peti- 
tion, but quite as certainly it expresses 
itself in the total action of our lives. 
This is what Jesus meant, I think, when 
he told that strange story of the unjust 
judge, whose character is certainly not to 
be taken as in any way representative 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 79 

of the character of God, but the point 
of whose story is that "man ought always 
to pray and not to faint." This also was 
in his thought when, coming down from 
the mountain, and finding his disciples un- 
able to help the suffering boy, he uttered 
that cryptic sentence: "This kind goeth 
not out except by prayer," as though the 
spiritual forces demanded by this occasion 
could only be released through a settled 
and determined craving of the soul. 

Such prayer forms a demand upon the 
universe which can hardly be denied. It 
is persistent. It is purposeful. It is un- 
conquerable. It concentrates the mind 
upon a single goal. It drains all the 
energies of one's being into a single chan- 
nel. It calls into alliance and cooperation 
with itself invisible and eternal forces. 
The whole cosmos responds to such in- 
sistence. 

In this sense, of course, all men are 
praying, either for good or for ill. The 
people of the Central Empires prayed for 
victory as certainly as did our Allies and 
ourselves. On one side of the line the 
devout German soldier must frequently 



80 FLUTES OP SILENCE 

have prayed, "Unser Vater, give us vic- 
tory, subdue our enemies before us." 
While on the other side of the line, the 
devout Poilu must frequently have lifted 
his petition, "Notre Pere, give us the 
victory, let not our enemies triumph over 
us/ 5 Why has the prayer of the French 
man been answered and the prayer of the 
German been denied? Is it because God 
is always on the side of the strongest 
army? No, if that had been the case, 
Germany would have been triumphant, as 
we have already indicated, in the first year 
of the war. No, it was because the prayer 
of the one was in harmony with the eter- 
nal order of things. It was in accord with 
the moral laws of the universe, while the 
prayer of the other was out of harmony 
with the will of God as it is expressed in 
the ethical and spiritual life of man. 
Hence the stars in their courses fought 
with the French against the Germans. 

The electrical engineer who is busy with 
some installation of power knows perfectly 
well that he cannot get results unless his 
operations are in perfect harmony with the 
will of God as it is revealed in the laws 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 81 

and conditions of nature's action. No 
more can individuals or nations expect to 
receive the final answer to their prayers 
unless the settled purpose of their hearts 
is in accordance with the established order 
of things. But nothing is impossible to 
one whose prayer is in harmony with the 
will of God as it is expressed in nature 
and in life. 

Many eyes are straining forward wist- 
fully into the new future that we believe 
will issue from the ruins of the Old World. 
How many molds of custom and habit 
have been shattered, how many estab- 
lished institutions have been shaken! In 
what new forms will civilization crystal- 
lize? That depends upon what we desire 
more than anything else — in short, our 
prayers. If we sit still and fold our hands, 
we may be sure that everything will 
follow the line of least resistance and 
drift back into old grooves of selfishness 
and greed. But if we are determined upon 
a world order in which Christian prin- 
ciples shall prevail; if it is our settled and 
unconquerable purpose that the spirit of 
the first great Democrat shall control all 



82 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

relations and activities, and if our prayer 
is not the formal one of the lips but also 
the insistent one of the life, then we may 
be sure that what we ask will be given 
and what we seek will be found. 

But such prayer will involve our time, 
our strength, our property, our sons and 
daughters and all the most precious treas- 
ures of our hearts. It will mean that 
nothing is too valuable to be sacrified in 
the interests of our petition, that no 
amount of effort will be spared. It will 
mean that we are determined to risk 
everything that we may win for ourselves 
and for society the best that God has 
to offer. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

An adventure is an undertaking in 
which a hazard is accepted. The issue 
or the outcome cannot be determined be- 
forehand. It is dependent upon an un- 
certainty, and is therefore full of chance 
and risk. The business man ventures to 
invest his money in the purchase of a 
piece of property. He assumes that the 
property will increase in value. He is not 
sure that this will be the case, but he is 
willing to take the risk and he makes the 
venture. It is just such venturesome dar- 
ing which forms the nerve of enterprise 
in commercial and industrial activities. 
An explorer sets sail for some uncharted 
sea. He does not know the things that 
will befall him in the offing, but because 
of certain indications he believes he will 
find a new and undiscovered land. He 
may return empty-handed or he may not 
return at all, but he accepts the hazard 
and makes the venture. 

83 



84 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

It is just such venturesome daring 
which has opened up the whole world to 
commerce and to civilization. Even the 
scientist, who is supposed to deal only 
with a body of known facts and laws, is 
constantly using his known facts as a 
basis on which to make new assumptions 
and experiments. He is not sure his 
assumptions are correct or that his ex- 
periment will prove successful, but he ac- 
cepts the risk. It is just such venture- 
some daring on the part of the chemist, 
the physiologist, the engineer, or the 
physician, which has brought about many 
lines of physical and material progress. 

Life at every stage is a hazardous under- 
taking. To be born is an adventure. 
No one can look down upon a sleeping 
child in its cradle, without wondering what 
shut casket of possibilities is locked up in 
that slumbering soul. Who will dare to 
prophesy what is brewing, what is shaping 
in that dim and distant future! What 
romance, tragedy, heroism, or despair 
will be woven into the fabric of that 
child's life! 

To go to school is an adventure. I, for 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 85 

one, remember right well my first day's 
contact with the public school. My good 
father left me at the doorway and as I 
listened to his retreating footsteps in the 
hall, an overwhelming sense of the loneli- 
ness and adventuresomeness of life swept 
over me. Here were curious and un- 
familiar faces peering at me from every 
side. What new experiences of friendliness 
or enmity did they hold for me? And 
this strange and wonderful creature who 
sat at the end of the room, "who opened 
her mouth with understanding, and whose 
lips dropped wisdom''! And those books 
and charts and pictures with which I was 
surrounded, all suggestive of curious and 
interesting information! What a wonder- 
ful day of adventure it was, and it proved 
to be the beginning of an endless succes- 
sion of such days, as step by step the 
mind unfolded in its natural growth. 

To greet every new morning is an ad- 
venture, for who knows what may befall 
us before the day is done? What changes 
of circumstance, what new combinations 
of experience may alter the current of 
our lives! 



86 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

One windy day, many years ago, a 
ragged and unkempt urchin who was work- 
ing in a printing office at Hannibal, 
Missouri, at a very meager wage, was on 
his way from the office to his home when 
he saw flying along the pavement a scrap 
of paper, a leaf from a book. Ordinarily 
he would have paid no attention to it, 
but having become a printer, it had a 
sort of professional interest for him, and 
so he caught the flying scrap and exam- 
ined it. It proved to be a leaf from some 
history of Joan of Arc. He had never 
heard of her before. He had never read 
any history. His education was very 
meager. Now, however, something broke 
loose within him. Deep fires of compas- 
sion were kindled for this gentle Maid of 
Orleans; burning resentment toward her 
captors. It was an awakening of interest 
in history and in literature and in every 
phase of human experience; it was like 
an hour of conversion and from that mo- 
ment of intellectual rebirth, he went on- 
ward and upward until he stood upon the 
pinnacle of fame, the foremost man of 
letters in the English-speaking world. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 87 

So for all of us each new day may hold 
its great adventure; the making of a new 
friend, the reading of a new book, the 
thrill of some new experience. And if 
life has in it the romance of continuous 
adventure, what shall we say of death? 
What more, indeed, could we say of death 
than that word which Mr. Frohman spoke 
concerning it as he stood on the deck of 
the sinking Lusitania: "Why fear death? 
It is the most beautiful adventure of life.'* 

"Some time at eve, when the tide is low, 

I shall slip my mooring and sail away, 
With no response to the friendly hail 

Of kindred craft in the busy bay, 
In the silent hush of the twilight pale, 

When the night stoops down to embrace the day, 
And the voices call in the water's flow — 
Sometime at eve, when the tide is low, 

I shall slip my mooring and sail away. 

"Through the purpling shadows that darkly trail 
O'er the ebbing tide of the Unknown Sea, 

I shall fare me away with a dip of the sail 

And a ripple of waters to tell the tale 
Of a lonely voyager, sailing away, 
To the Mystic Isles, where at anchor lay 

The crafts of those who have sailed before 

O'er the Unknown Sea to the Unseen Shore." 



88 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

With these elements of hazard and risk 
woven into the fabric of our being, it is 
not strange that we should be lovers of 
the tales of pioneering and adventure. We 
sometimes speak of Greek and Latin as 
"dead languages/ 5 and yet I venture to 
say the world will never outgrow its 
interest in those marvelous wanderings of 
Ulysses and iEneas, and every generation 
cherishes such stories as Robinson Crusoe, 
Treasure Island, Captains Courageous, the 
wonderful fancies of Jules Verne, and thou- 
sands of other such creations which em- 
body the hazard and the charm of great 
adventure. 

For the same reason, I suppose, we find 
it so difficult to restrain men from wasting 
their substance in games of chance and in 
riotous living. The thing itself is evil 
enough, but it is instinctive with us, this 
making of a hazard. Life itself is such a 
gamble that we can scarcely refrain from 
making ventures even in our sport. 

Of all the lives that have a surplus of 
this element of uncertainty and romance, 
none is more fascinating than that of Paul, 
the traveler, the Roman citizen, the great 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 89 

apostle to the Gentiles, who went rest- 
lessly from city to city, carrying with him 
the kindling torch of his Master's gospel, 
until he had set both Europe and Asia 
on fire with this new enthusiasm. Such 
pioneering as he did! Such dangers as he 
faced! Shipwreck, mob-law, robbery, hun- 
ger, and cold. Such suffering as he en- 
dured! Stoned, beaten, tormented, im- 
prisoned, defying the wrath of men, wit- 
nessing before kings and emperors; mas- 
tering every set of circumstances into 
which he came; restlessly passing from city 
to city, not knowing the things that would 
befall him from day to day, but risking 
everything for the sake of his passionate 
faith. In such a career, life is, indeed, 
"an affair of cavalry, 55 as Robert Louis 
Stevenson once said, "a thing to be dash- 
ingly used and cheerfully hazarded." It 
is a sally of faith, a venture of confidence. 
Religion is the highest expression of this 
adventurous faith of men. It is the su- 
preme use of an attitude of mind which 
we use every day in other realms of our 
experience. It is an effort to penetrate 
the mystery of being and to relate our petty 



90 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

human interests to the final and ultimate 
interests of life, which enshroud us like the 
dusky shades of an eternal twilight. 

Religion assumes the existence of God. 
It has no scientific proof of God's existence 
to offer, but it dares to believe in such a 
Presence, building in the dark its tunnel of 
faith on the assumption that God is tunnel- 
ing on the other side, and that it will 
touch God there in the darkness and find 
the world's great altar stairs. It throws 
out these convictions into the unseen and 
ventures its life upon them as if they were 
most surely true. To me one of the most 
significant, if unconventional definitions, of 
religion that has ever been offered, is the 
one which Donald Hankey gave us from 
the trenches: "True religion is betting one's 
life that there is a God." Donald Hankey 
knows now whether he has won or lost 
his bet, but when he made that statement 
he was risking everything on the assump- 
tion that God is and that he is the re- 
warder of those who diligently seek him. 

Again, in the realm of conduct, religion 
assumes that justice, mercy, and truth are 
ultimate moral values. This proposition 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 91 

also is beyond the reach of final proof. 
Indeed, there is much that seems to make 
against it. Truth is frequently crushed to 
earth and we do not always live to see it 
rise again. Truth is often on the scaffold 
and wrong is often on the throne, but 
religion assumes that 

"That scaffold sways the future, and, behind the 
dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 
above his own." 

It cannot be demonstrated beyond ques- 
tion that if we follow justice, mercy, and 
truth, we will reap the final rewards of 
life as those cannot who live lives of pas- 
sion, lust, and pride. But religion throws 
out these ethical convictions as one might 
build one wing of an arch, on the assump- 
tion that the other side of the arch is also 
building out of the unseen to meet it, and 
on the basis of these convictions we hazard 
everything. As Lincoln said to the Amer- 
ican people, so religion says to its ad- 
herents: "Let us have faith that right 
makes might, and in that faith let us to 
the end dare to do our duty." 



AN ADVENTURE OF THE SPIRIT 

We have asserted that life itself is a 
continuous adventure into the unknown, 
and that religion is the highest expression 
of that venturesome faith. Now, we in- 
sist that to accept the Christian interpre- 
tation of life and duty and destiny is to 
make the greatest of all adventures — an 
adventure of the Spirit. There are other 
religions in the world, but none of them 
hazards so much upon the intrinsic worth 
of a man's soul. With Christianity the 
soul is supreme. It is the one thing with- 
out which life would not be worth the 
living. It is the only thing that will sur- 
vive the wreck of all earthly conditions. 

Christianity assumes first of all that the 
only final values of life are spiritual values. 
It insists that man cannot live by bread 
alone; that his life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things that he possess- 
eth; that it is of small use to him if he 
gain the whole world and lose his own 

92 



FLUTES OP SILENCE 93 

soul, and that there is nothing which he 
may give in exchange for his soul. 

The Christian has no absolute demon- 
stration of the truth of these statements 
to offer. He cannot prove to you beyond 
the shadow of a doubt that it is better 
to live the life of the Spirit than the life 
of the flesh. The things that may be seen 
and touched and tasted do seem to be far 
more valuable; they can be weighed and 
measured and estimated; their reality ap- 
pears to be beyond question. Not so the 
things of the spirit. But the Christian 
dares to make this assumption; he accepts 
the hazard and is willing to risk every- 
thing for the sake of those values which 
he carries in his heart. 

Christianity assumes, again, that the 
character of God can be interpreted in 
terms of Fatherhood. How beautifully 
Jesus taught this truth! Not by argu- 
ment, but by implication. As they walked 
through the fields, he called attention to 
the scarlet lily, nodding beside the path. 
"Behold it," he said; "mark it, think 
about it. God is in that flower. He 
clothes the grass of the field." Pointing 



94 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

to the bird winging its flight across the 
blue sky, he said, again: "Behold it, 
mark it, think about it. God is with the 
bird. It does not sow nor reap nor gather 
into barns, but your heavenly Father feed- 
eth it. Are ye not of more value than 
birds and flowers. Will ye not trust your 
heavenly Father?" It is to be noted that 
Jesus did not attempt any scientific demon- 
stration concerning the existence and the 
character of God. He had no tangible 
proof of it to offer. Indeed, it is sometimes 
very hard to accept it in view of life's 
sternest facts. 

"O it is hard to work for God, 
To rise and take his part 
Upon this battlefield of earth, 
And not sometimes lose heart! 

"He hides himself so wondrously, 
As though there were no God; 
He is least seen when all the powers 
Of ill are most abroad; 

"Or he deserts us in the hour 
The fight is all but lost; 
And seems to leave us to ourselves 
Just when we need him most. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 95 

"It is not so, but so it looks; 
And we lose courage then, 
And doubts will come if God hath kept 
His promises to men." 

But the Christian dares to assume what 
even Jesus did not attempt to scientifically 
demonstrate. He insists that 

"Right is right since God is God, 
And right the day will win." 

He ventures to live as though God were, 
indeed, the just and righteous Father and 
as though the universe were indeed the 
well-governed household of such a Father. 
Christianity assumes that the law of life 
is not the law of gain and aggression, but 
the law of love and sacrifice. And once 
more it is beyond the realm of positive 
proof. It is not always clear, by any 
means, that "love is the greatest thing in 
the world/ 5 A whole school of thinkers, 
of whom Nietzsche may be named as an 
example, have succeeded in persuading an 
entire nation that the spirit of love and 
sacrifice is a false and evil spirit; that the 
gospel of good will is the most stupid of 
all heresies; that lust of power and ma- 



m FLUTES OF SILENCE 

terial advantage are alone worth living and 
worth fighting for. 

But in spite of all that seems to accrue 
to selfishness and greed, the Christian 
dares to believe that the world is not a 
place of plunder, but a field of service; not 
a puddle of privilege, but a channel of 
loving ministry; that those who lose them- 
selves will find themselves; that those who 
give will be the ones who finally get, and 
that the only ultimate redemption of the 
individual or society must come by the 
redemption which is through sacrifice. The 
golden crown has been hitherto the world's 
symbol of greatness, but Christianity has 
dared to uplift its crimson Cross of Pain. 

Once more Christianity assumes that 
life does not end in death. The road of 
existence passes on over the crest of the 
hill, beyond the dip of the horizon, in 
search of "a city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God/' To the 
Christian, life is a long, long road which 
passes over hill and dale. In the valley 
of the shadow, one cannot see beyond the 
hill-crest, but faith assumes that the road 
stretches on into the sunset and it calls 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 97 

to us with the lure of the sea and the 
sky and the stars. 

The Christian faith therefore, with its 
distinctive conception of God, its own 
interpretation of life, duty, and destiny, 
is a challenge to a great adventure of the 
spirit. When it is rightly understood in 
all its implications, I do not believe it 
appeals at all to faint-hearted, ease-loving, 
selfish individuals. It is a challenge to 
the highest living. It is not content with 
average conduct. It puts before us an 
absolute ethical ideal. It demands self- 
conquest and the mastery of evil in our- 
selves and in society. It is a challenge to 
the highest thinking, for its conceptions 
of God and its interpretation of life and 
duty and destiny do not lend themselves 
to the easy solutions of the intellect. 

Robert Browning has an unenviable 
reputation as a most obscure and cloudy 
writer of English. One reads with a smile 
that "Mr. David Duff has recently turned 
'Sordello' into English and published the 
translation in attractive form." Mrs. 
Carlyle declared that she read the same 
poem four times without discovering 



98 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

whether Sordello was the name of a man, 
a horse, a book, or a town. Nevertheless 
every red-blooded individual thrills to the 
name of Robert Browning. There was a 
rugged power about him which commands 
supreme regard. When Ruskin wrote to 
him asking him to explain some diffi- 
culties in his style, he replied with splendid 
independence, "A poet's affair is with his 
God, to whom he is alone accountable 
and from whom is his reward." There is 
preserved in the British Museum a letter 
which suggests a different viewpoint from 
which to judge of the work of Browning. 
Writing to a friend in reply to this same 
criticism of obscurity, he declared that he 
had never intentionally tried to mystify his 
readers, but, on the other hand, he never 
"intended to write a line which could 
be taken as a substitute for a game of 
billiards or an after-dinner cigar." He was 
quite willing that other men should write 
literature adapted to an afternoon siesta, 
but for his part he determined to give 
them nuts to crack and ore to mine. 
Therefore his work becomes a decided 
challenge to the intellect and will prob- 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 99 

ably endure when the work of lesser poets 
is forgotten. 

Now, Christianity is like that. It is 
no substitute for an ease-loving, selfish 
philosophy of life. It is like a trumpet 
call, appealing only to those who are will- 
ing to risk everything, dare anything, and 
press on through all things that they may 
win for themselves and for society the 
best that life has to offer in the realm of 
character and conduct. 

One has only to turn to the New Testa- 
ment to see how this note of challenge 
rings out through everything which Jesus 
said and did. When he called his dis- 
ciples it was in the form of a sum- 
mons to larger opportunity and service. 
"Come," he said, "and I will take you 
off the lake and put you on the ocean. I 
will take you from your oars and nets and 
set you to the supreme task of fishing for 
men in the interests of God's kingdom. " 
A young Scribe came to him in the height 
of his first enthusiasm saying, "Master, I 
will follow you anywhere. 5 ' Jesus, looking 
him through and through with eyes that 
read his inmost soul, replied: "Are you 



100 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

willing to sleep out on the hills among 
the wild things with me? The foxes have 
holes and the birds of the air have nests, 
but the Son of man hath not where to 
lay his head/' This adventurous and home- 
less sort of life did not seem to appeal to 
the scribe, for we hear no more of his 
determination. 

The plainest principles of Jesus's ethics 
were a challenge to better living. While 
he recognized the value of the ancient 
codes, he lifted the standard still higher, 
saying, "Ye have heard that it hath been 
said by them of old, 'Thou shalt do^ so 
and so/ but I say unto you 'Do thus and 
thus/" and by that word he increased 
immeasurably the distance between what 
we are and what we ought to be. 

All nature and all experience are an 
echo of this challenge of faith. One sum- 
mer we were crossing the Simplon Pass 
and our ears were deafened by the thunder 
of a mountain cataract. The roar of its 
mighty voice seemed like a challenge to 
our puny strength. "Try me," it said, 
"and see what I can do for you. Harness 
me to your dynamos and engines and test 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 101 

my strength/ 5 And sure enough, the very 
next summer the people responded to the 
challenge of the torrent, chained it to 
their engines, made it turn their wheels, 
and now by its power the whole valley 
is lighted in the night and by its strength 
the mountain railway climbs to the sum- 
mit amid the glistening snow. Since 
time began, every flash of lightning that 
ripped across the heavens has been a 
challenge to humanity, saying "Try me, 
test me, use me," and after ages of stupe- 
fied wonder and childish fear men re- 
sponded to the challenge of the skies and 
harnessed the lightning to do their bidding 
in a thousand ways. 

Thus God lies all about us everywhere. 
In the motion of the river, in the thunder 
of the sea, in the equilibrium of the birds 
who dare us to attempt their flights, in 
the conditions of success and the oppor- 
tunities of development along ten thousand 
lines of physical, mental, and spiritual 
achievement. In the varied experiences of 
life, with all their hidden treasures of dis- 
cipline and training. There may be limits 
to what one can possess. There may be 



102 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

bounds to what one can do in the way of 
outward achievement and power, but there 
are neither limits nor bounds to what one 
can be, for the horizons of spiritual achieve- 
ment are infinitely far removed, and the 
adventure of the soul is the supreme 
challenge which life has to offer. 

There is one final word that must be 
added. If we accept the challenge of the 
Christian faith and adventure our life 
upon its great convictions, a strange thing 
happens in the laboratory of our expe- 
rience; the assumptions are transmuted 
into certainty. 

In her letters from China Mrs. Conger 
tells us: "If I enter a Chinese shop and 
look at some of the good things which 
are there displayed for sale and say 
nothing about the inferior ones, the shop- 
keeper will show me an inner room with 
more good things and fewer poor ones. 
If I still appreciate the good, he will take 
me to another room beyond with still 
better articles for sale. I have been 
through six different rooms in this way 
until in the last all things were of the 
very best." 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 103 

This is preeminently true of Christian 
living. If we accept the challenge and 
make the venture, choosing for ourselves 
the good which Jesus indicates, then more 
and better things will be revealed in each 
new epoch of our experience, until at 
last we do believe there will be estab- 
lished that society into which nothing 
entereth which defiles or maketh a lie, 
wherein God gathers the glory and honor 
of the nations, where the absolute ideals 
of personal conduct and social righteous- 
ness will be realized, and where the per- 
fect man which is the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ will be 
revealed. 



SOLITUDE 

Shut out the world! 
The voices of God's world are full of rest 

To the tired heart, and all its scenes 
Fall like a blessing on the tranquil breast 
That on the heart of nature comes to lean. 
'Tis sweet to draw the curtains of the soul 
around 
And talk with God, and hear his sweet 
replies, 
In all the harmony of nature's sound, 

In all the beauty that around us lies. 
We can but feel him nearer to our prayers 

In these bright solitudes, 
Than when we seek him through the 
tainted air 
Of feverish multitudes. 
Shut out the world! 

Shut out the world! 
Here, where the golden sunshine falls 
In broken shafts amid the sheltering 
trees, 
List to the voice that from thy spirit calls, 
Soft as a murmur of the summer breeze. 
104 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 105 

Talk with thine inner self, and learn 
What springs of power, what noble 
possibilities are 
In thine own soul inurned; 
How thy poor folded wings might soar 
afar 
Above the mists that shroud these vales 
of care, 
And in the calm of God's own sunshine 
rest. 
Go forth to duty with a faith sublimed 
And a transfiguring glory in thy breast. 
Shut out the world! 



PERSONS 

Kipling's story of Kim is worth read- 
ing because of the insight which it gives 
into Oriental life and character. Kim is 
a little Indian vagabond, "the friend of 
all the world." There is white blood in 
his veins, but the spirit of the East is 
in his heart. He is keen, observant, re- 
sourceful, interested in everything, but 
primarily in people and in the problems 
of their existence. He loves the smell of 
the caravan, the gossip of the village, the 
crowded bazaars. He is once or twice 
pictured squatting on his heels in Oriental 
fashion under a spreading tree or in the 
crowded railway station of Lucknow, hyp- 
notizing himself into the most profound 
reflection by repeating to himself this 
phrase, "I am Kim, I am Kim/ 5 And on 
this pin-point of personal existence his 
thought revolves about the whole problem 
of being. 

Somewhere I have read that Alfred 
106 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 107 

Tennyson would sometimes sit apart, ob- 
livious to his surroundings and plunged 
in the same profound reflection, repeating 
the while to himself his own name, "Alfred 
Tennyson/ 5 

I suppose we have all had similar mo- 
ments when, in the midst of the day's 
work we suddenly stop short with the 
consciousness that the most wonderful 
thing in the world is our own personal 
existence and the fact that we can con- 
sciously say "I am, I think, I feel, I will," 
thus asserting our own unique and dis- 
tinct existence as over against all the 
world beside. 

All of which goes to show that per- 
sonality is the master principle. It is 
the key to the meaning of nature, of God, 
and of human experience. In the light 
of it we begin to understand what it is 
all about — this concentration of star dust; 
this evolution of worlds, this yearning and 
travailing of nature, this suffering, sorrow- 
ing, and rejoicing life of man. It is all 
a drama of the growing soul and is in- 
tended to issue at last, we trust, in a per- 
fect soul. It is for this that the whole 



108 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

creation groaneth and travaileth together 
in pain even until now. 

To be sure, we have many objective 
interests and activities which occupy our 
attention and absorb our time. We build 
cities, we sail the seas, we dig in the earth, 
we cut down forests, we make money; 
but they are all tributaries to this main 
stream of being. No thoughtful man ever 
would claim that these were ends in them- 
selves. Unfortunately, we sometimes get 
more interested in the tributaries than in 
the main stream. We put the cart before 
the horse, and the end is obscured by the 
enphasis upon the means. Men become 
so absorbed in the objective activities as 
to forget that the growth of souls is the 
ultimate end. 

However, our fundamental instincts, our 
basic laws and institutions, recognize this 
central goal of life. They are planned 
principally to protect and help the indi- 
vidual; and to assure to every man the 
inalienable rights of life, liberty, and 
happiness. Society is slowly growing a 
conscience in this matter. When in our 
day a manufacturer becomes so engrossed 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 109 

in the making of money that he forgets to 
pay a living wage or to properly house 
his employees or to protect them from 
dangerous machinery, society through its 
laws says to such a man, "You must not 
become so absorbed in making money 
that you forget the main thing, which 
is the relation of your business to the 
creation of character and the welfare of 
man." 

Some there are who are interested pri- 
marily in nature. They study the flowers, 
the birds, the rocks; or they have an 
artist's eye for hill forms and tree forms. 
They love the fair vista of mountain and 
valley. But what significance has nature, 
considered as an interest apart by itself? 
What is it but the scenery against whose 
background the drama of man's life is 
acted? How much more significant it 
becomes when one hears among, the 
flower-flecked meadows the song of the 
plowman or the laughter of children, or 
when the fair prospect is enlivened by the 
blue smoke of the cotter's fire, rising 
straight into the quiet air! Nature has 
no meaning apart from man. 



110 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Some are principally interested in gov- 
ernment and history. They are concerned 
with the march of events and the sequence 
of causes. But what is history save the 
lengthened shadow of certain great per- 
sonalities, who have embodied in them- 
selves the sentiment and thought of their 
times, and have been able to shape the 
destinies of society through sheer force of 
personal character? 

Some are interested primarily in organ- 
ization and systematic efficiency, but when 
has any organization or system prevailed 
until there stood at the heart of it some 
living, breathing son of man, who was able 
to vitalize it? 

Some are interested in art, literature, 
music. But what are these save the ex- 
pressions of the genius of certain great 
souls? Who cares for mere colorless work 
of art? It becomes of interest to us only 
as it reveals the personality of the artist. 
Coleridge said of a certain line in Words- 
worth's poetry, "If I had met those words 
running wild in the Desert of Arabia 
I would have immediately cried out, 
'Wordsworth! Wordsworth! 5 " And the 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 111 

same is true of Michael Angelo, Titian 
and Raphael, Beethoven, Mozart, and 
Mendelssohn, of Homer, Dante, and 
Shakespeare. Their genius was apparent 
in their ability to personalize every frag- 
ment that left their hands. 

Some claim to be interested primarily 
in philanthropy and in organized benev- 
olence. But mere institutional machinery 
is helpless unless it becomes a device for 
multiplying the points of contact between 
the world and real personalities. We can- 
not form an association for the dispensing 
of sympathy and have a card index file, 
and inform applicants for sympathy that 
they must fill in upon a blank card the 
cause for which they want sympathy and 
the amount of it they desire. The real 
good work of the world is all done by 
personal contact, and true philanthropy is 
ministered through individual touch. 

Persons, then, are the most real and 
substantial objects of our knowledge. 
They touch us at more points and effect 
us in more ways and fit more closely into 
our being than anything else in the 
universe. 



112 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

What more natural, than that this 
personal element should become the very 
heart and core of real religion. Religion 
is man's effort to relate himself to the 
unseen and eternal. And in that quest 
our nature is not satisfied with vague 
abstractions or empty forms. It seeks to 
find in the universe a spirit, an under- 
standing like our own, but infinite, with 
whom we may establish personal relations. 
There are hundreds of thousands of peo- 
ple who are driven to their knees in the 
stress of some great emergency, not be- 
cause they were ever taught to pray, nor 
because they have any formulated belief 
in prayer, but simply because they must 
pray. The self within them in its deep- 
est need cries out for companionship and 
sympathy to that other self whose presence 
it daily feels, but cannot understand. 

Browning, in his great poem of "Saul," 
has shown how vital a part this is of all 
religion. David, you will remember, is 
standing at the door of the tent reasoning 
with the darkened mind of the unhappy 
king, and thus he argues: 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 113 

" 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for; my 

flesh that I seek 
In the God-head! I seek and I find it, O Saul! it 

shall be 
A face like my face that receives thee; a Man like 

to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; A Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new Life to thee." 

And then, in prophetic spirit, he cries 
"See the Christ stand!" 

Whenever Christianity has drifted away 
from this fundamental point, whenever its 
aspect of personal relationship to God is 
overshadowed by rite, ceremony, or eccle- 
siastical regime, a reaction is bound to 
follow. In the age of dogma, the Catholic 
faith was conceived of as a cold accept- 
ance of a body of doctrine. Then it was 
that starving men and women, unable to 
find satisfaction in such an idea of religion, 
exalted to a place of reverent worship 
the person of the Virgin Mary. In their 
devotion to her this craving for a personal 
relation with the unseen found passionate 
expression. 

Dante is an interesting study in this 
respect. "Christ is strangely absent from 



114 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

his great drama of salvation." Being a 
scholar, he was naturally in sympathy 
with the theological conceptions of his 
time, but the heart of Dante was not 
satisfied with dogma. Dr. Dinsmore has 
pointed out in his study of the teaching 
of Dante, that the longing for the warm, 
intimate element in religion expressed it- 
self in personifying religious truths in the 
fair form of Beatrice. She occupies for 
him the position which a religious genius 
of a different type, such as Saint Francis 
or Saint Bernard, would have given to 
Christ. 

It is not without significance that when 
Dante, at the close of the Paradiso, looked 
into the effulgent light wherein God him- 
self was supposed to dwell, he saw in that 
illuminated circle the effigy of our own 
image. It is this eternally human quality 
in God which makes it possible for us to 
love and trust him and follow him forever. 
The humanity which was in Christ is a 
disclosure of what is forever in God. 
What Jesus was on Calvary, in the com- 
passion of his heart the Father is eternally 
upon his throne. The cross of Christ 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 115 

is the power of God unto salvation, be- 
cause it is the embodiment of this funda- 
mental truth. O how passionately men 
have felt it! 

"Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee." 

"Jesus, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly." 

"Jesus, the very thought of thee 
With sweetness fills the breast; 
But sweeter far thy face to see, 
And in thy presence rest." 

And no words can more fittingly suggest 
the substance of this thought than these 
throbbing sentences from Saint Bernard: 
"If thou writest, nothing therein has 
savor to me unless I read Jesus in it. 
If thou discussest or conversist, nothing 
there is agreeable to me unless in it also 
Jesus resounds. Jesus is honey in the 
mouth, melody in the ear, a song of 
jubilee in the heart." 



CLEANSED AS WE GO 

The process of human betterment is not 
primarily a process of revolution. To be 
sure, we frequently have periods of rad- 
ical change and upheaval, such as we 
are now passing through, but even results 
of such a period are conserved and made 
permanent by a much longer period of 
unconscious growth and readjustment. It 
is primarily, then, a process of evolution: 
first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
corn in the ear. 

The realization of this fact is likely to 
be rather disappointing. My thought fre- 
quently goes back to the story of Sekomi, 
an African chief to whom David Living- 
stone refers in his Journal. 

"One day," he says, "Sekomi sat be- 
side me in the heat in moody silence. 
Suddenly he said: "My heart is sick with 
passion, lust, and pride. I desire to be 
healed. Have you not some medicine 
that will make me well?" Livingstone 
reached for his New Testament and began 

116 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 117 

to explain the only method by which life 
can be redeemed. But Sekomi rose with 
an impatient gesture. "No," he said, "I 
want to be healed now. I want a med- 
icine that I can drink and be cured at 
once." The impatient wish is characteris- 
tic of us all. 

If we could only be assured that within 
the next few years human relations 
would be so perfectly adjusted that a 
decidedly better turn would be given to 
the life of the world, we would be quite 
satisfied. But it is rather disconcerting to 
be told that long processes of growth and 
spiritual nurture must intervene before 
ever the ripest fruits of the present vic- 
tory can be gathered. 

Human experience bears out the truth 
of the statement that this is the manner 
in which most of us are healed of our 
diseases, whether they are of the body 
or of the soul. Rare indeed is the phy- 
sician or surgeon who can work an in- 
stantaneous cure. The best that he can 
do, usually, is to assist the healing proc- 
esses of nature. Not that radical changes 
do not sometimes occur. More than one 



118 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

individual, like Saul of Tarsus, can bear 
witness to the sublime moment when the 
whole current of life was turned into a 
new and better channel. But the excep- 
tion only proves the rule, for most of us, 
like polluted streams, are cleansed as we 
flow. 

How many an unpromising boy has 
outgrown the dullness, stupidity, and awk- 
wardness of his early years, and through 
the discipline of experience, has become a 
successful and respected man ! How many 
a wild and arrogant youth, who has 
defied authority, has been so tamed by 
the marching years as to become a humble 
and submissive spirit! How many a 
frivolous, careless, selfish girl has been so 
sobered by life as to become a womanly 
and unselfish character! It is thus that 
many of us are cleansed as we go. 

We must avoid misunderstanding by 
making one point clear. We are not saved 
by what we do, in spite of what we have 
just been setting forth. There is no deny- 
ing the truth of Paul's statement to the 
jailer at Philippi when, in answer to his 
question "What must I do to be saved/ 5 



FLUTES OP SILENCE 119 

the apostle answered, "Believe." What is 
salvation? It is an inward adjustment 
between ourselves and God; an inward 
Tightness of attitude toward God and to- 
ward our fellow men which produces, as 
a matter of course, that experience of 
peace, confidence, and satisfaction which 
we call "salvation." And the only per- 
manent and effective salvation for the 
individual or for society is that correct 
inward attitude toward God and toward 
man produced by contact with the Spirit 
of Christ. 

But the point is, that this inward atti- 
tude cannot be produced artificially. Such 
right inward relations are too delicate and 
spiritual to be manufactured by machin- 
ery. A group of us cannot get together 
in convention and say: "Go to now, we 
will create a better world. We will enact 
laws and organize institutions by which 
society will be redeemed at once. There 
will be no more giving way to passion, 
lust, and pride. Henceforth all men will 
do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly 
before God." All this is fine, and it has 
its value, but the world cannot be thus 



120 FLUTES OP SILENCE 

redeemed, for, in the last analysis, nothing 
matters but this inward Tightness of ad- 
justment between God and man. 

Now, the thing that I should like to 
say for our comfort and encouragement 
is this. That life itself in the long run 
frequently takes care of this inward ad- 
justment. Unconsciously, as we go on 
our way, belief comes to us. In our 
inexperience we frequently adopt theories 
that will not work, but life often corrects 
them almost without our knowledge. In 
spite of ourselves, we come to feel a cer- 
tain respect for the eternal order of God 
which was here long before our cradle 
was rocked and will be here long after 
our graves are forgotten. Contact with 
reality frequently takes care of our doubt, 
our unbelief, our arrogance and pride. It 
has often been remarked that Abraham 
Lincoln was a pronounced skeptic in his 
younger manhood, but the sobering in- 
fluence of responsibility and the con- 
sciousness that the heart of an entire 
nation beat through his own, drove him 
for refuge to the Rock that is higher 
than we are. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 121 

Skepticism, anarchy, and crime are, for 
the most part, affairs of youth. Life, 
however, is disciplinary and educational in 
its value. It never handles us with 
gloves. Its chastisements are frequent. 
It drives us from pillar to post. We are 
cuffed and buffetted by its storms, and 
while one cannot write this down as a 
universal law, yet it is certain as a matter 
of common observation that we are fre- 
quently mellowed and matured by the 
ripening experiences of life. But to me 
this cleansing which comes to us as we 
go is no less the Spirit of God than would 
be the radical transformation of a spir- 
itual upheaval. 

The general application of this thought 
at the present time has in it much of en- 
couragement. Everywhere the heart of 
the common man looks forward into this 
new era with wistful eagerness, hoping for 
a new order of society based upon prin- 
ciples of justice, equality, and service, 
which once for all will take the place of 
the old order based upon selfishness and 
greed. A victory of distinct moral signifi- 
cance has been gained. If we only could 



122 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

be assured that the motives for human 
action henceforth would be of a higher 
character, that self-interest on the part 
of classes, races, and nations would be 
superseded by a desire for understand- 
ing, sympathy, and confidence! If we 
could be certain that the will of God 
would be done on earth as we believe it 
is done in heaven! that the spirit of 
Christ would from this time forth prevail 
in all human relationships! But sober 
second thought reminds us of the slow 
and tedious processes of education and 
discipline through which we have come to 
the present hour, and by means of which 
we must probably continue to advance. 
Whatever worthy outcome the conference 
of the nations at Versailles may have, a 
League of Nations for instance set- 
ting forth of distinctly higher principles 
of international action, we may be sure 
that even these fruits of a righteous 
victory must be supplemented by the 
development of an international conscience 
and the growth of that inward spirit of 
brotherhood which alone may make the 
result permanent. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 123 

If we are inclined to be a bit pessi- 
mistic, we may renew our faith by glancing 
back over the journey of one hundred 
years to see how truly we have been 
cleansed as we traveled forward. 

During the century in our own land 
slavery has been abolished; public educa- 
tion has been extended until there is no 
longer excuse for illiteracy; higher educa- 
tion has been opened to women, and they 
have been welcomed into all forms of 
industry. Laws for the protection of 
children have been multiplied, and the 
evils of child-labor have been lessened. 
The traffic in strong drink, the immediate 
source of so much of our poverty, 
crime, and disease, is on the eve of 
final extinction. A new civic conscience 
has been demanding higher standards of 
public duty and cleaner character in public 
officials. Suffrage of the citizen has been 
protected and the government made more 
immediately responsible to the people. 

In England, the House of Lords with 
all its ranks and dignities and details has 
become little more than an ornamental 
part of the machinery of government. 



124 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Its power has been taken away. The 
extent of suffrage has been greatly widened; 
women participate in the government and 
occupy seats in the House of Commons. 

France has been transformed from an 
autocracy to a free constitutional republic. 
Italy has become a free, united people. 
The last autocracies of Europe in Russia, 
Germany, and Austria have crumbled, and 
in their place the spirit of freedom is 
just now wildly demonstrative. But we 
cannot doubt that order will eventually 
come out of chaos and the spirit of democ- 
racy will triumph over the spirit of class 
hatred. 

He must have a genius for pessimism 
who can look back over the way along 
which we have journeyed and not see that 
we have been cleansed as we went. 

The personal bearing of all this is quite 
apparent. Without waiting for the spec- 
tacular changes which we wish might 
come, we are to go forward, each in his 
own way doing the thing which seems to 
be most required of him, and as we go we 
will be cleansed. For some of us the call 
of this new time may demand a greater 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 125 

consecration of wealth to the interests of 
the divine kingdom than we have 
ever imagined would be possible. For 
others it may mean a call to various 
forms of Christian service, so that the 
spirit of the Christian propaganda, in 
whose atmosphere alone democracy is safe, 
may be carried to every quarter of the 
earth. For some it may mean the develop- 
ment of new methods of business and of 
industry which will hasten the era of 
understanding and sympathy between all 
classes of society; for we cannot expect 
honesty and justice in international rela- 
tions until commerce and business are 
straightforward in their methods. To still 
others the call of the time may be a sum- 
mons to create Christian homes where 
childhood will be reared in intelligence and 
in integrity, or schools where ideals of 
service will take the place of ambition for 
selfish gain and youth will be taught that 
a man's value to society can no longer be 
measured by what he gets but only by 
what he has to give. 

For all of us it will mean the building 
of more stately mansions for our souls; 



126 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

and as we go on our way, building for 
this better time, by an inherent law of 
progress which is an expression of the 
eternal purpose of God, we will be cleansed. 



GROWTH 

Grow as the trees grow, 
Your head lifted straight to the sky, 
Your roots holding fast where they lie, 

In the richness below. 

Your branches outspread 
To the sun pouring down, and the dew, 
With the glorious, infinite blue, 

Stretching over your head. 

Receiving the storms 
That may writhe you and bend, but not 

break, 
While your roots the more sturdily take 

A strength in their forms. 
God means us the growth of his trees, 
Alike through the shadow and shine, 
Receiving as freely the life-giving wine, 

Of the air, and the breeze. 

Not sunshine alone, 
The soft summer dew and the breeze, 
Hath fashioned these wonderful trees. 

The tempest hath moaned, 
They have tossed their strong arms in 

despair 
At the blast of the terrible there 
In the thunder's loud tone. 
127 



128 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

But under it all 
Were the roots, clasping closer the sod, 
The tops still aspiring to God, 

Who prevented their fall. 

Come out from the gloom, 
And open your heart to the light 
That is flooding the world with delight 

And unfolding its bloom. 

His Kingdom of Grace 
Is symboled in all that we see; 
In budding and leafing of tree 

And fruit in its place. 



SEEMING POVERTY AND REAL 
WEALTH 

The law of the best living is paradox- 
ical. It is full of seeming contradictions. 
It is not in harmony with the commonly 
accepted opinions of men. According to 
this law, giving is getting, while holding 
is frequently losing. Among the best 
characters the weakest man is often the 
strongest, while he who loses his life is 
he who really finds it. Here too the poor 
are those who often make many rich, 
and those who have nothing become the 
possessors of all things. 

The underlying reason for this para- 
doxical nature of experience is clear. Our 
life is two-surfaced. It has an outside 
and an inside. The outside is related to 
property, tools, merchandise, food and 
drink, houses and lands, and all else that 
may be touched and seen. On the inside 
it is related to thoughts, ideas, emotions, 
volitions. 

And these two realms of experience are 
129 



130 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

distinct one from the other. Though they 
are parallel and interrelated, they are 
incommensurable, so much so that forces 
which are powerful and active in the 
outward, physical world are frequently not 
operative at all in the inward world of 
spirit. For instance, you may go with 
an armed force and apprehend a man's 
body, as the soldiers went out and ar- 
rested Jesus in the garden, but though 
you imprison the man's body, all the 
armies of an empire have not the slight- 
est power* to break his spirit or touch his 
soul. Physically Jesus was apprehended, 
but his spirit, his ideas were as free as 
the air. They were in the market place, 
on the streets, in the villages among the 
people. No armed force could apprehend 
or imprison his spirit. Even when Jesus 
stood chained among the soldiers in the 
judgment hall and his enemies seemed to 
have him in their grasp, in reality he was 
superior to them in influence and power. 

Then, again, values which are of vast 
significance in the physical world are fre- 
quently of no moment whatever in the 
inward realm of spirit. Money, which can 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 131 

buy anything in the outward world, is 
counted as dust in the balance, among 
the best men, when it is weighed against 
the ideals they carry in their hearts. 
Once upon a time there was a fanatic in 
Boston, so the story rims. This particular 
individual thought he had a revelation 
that the world was coming to an end 
that very night. He was strongly im- 
pressed with the idea that he must go 
at once and tell Emerson about it. So 
he hastened to Concord and, bursting in 
the door of Emerson's study, he cried out: 
"O, Mr. Emerson, I have the assurance 
that the world is coming to an end this 
very night/ 5 "Well," said the philosopher, 
calmly and serenely, lifting his eyes from 
the desk where he was writing, "we can 
get on very well without it.' 5 That was 
the spontaneous expression of a man who 
lived so largely the inward life of the 
spirit that outward values had ceased to 
be of vital consequence. 

The fact, then, that these two worlds 
are thus distinct and incommensurable and 
what is real in one is only apparent 
in the other, accounts for these strange 



132 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

paradoxes of our experience. Thus we 
observe one man who is forever searching 
restlessly for outward and earthly pleasure, 
but it seems always to elude him; while 
here is another who does not consciously 
seek it, and lo! satisfaction wells up 
within him like living water from a peren- 
nial fountain. Here, again, is one who is 
greedy of life's outward values. He ac- 
cumulates wealth, he multiplies comforts, 
he increases his power, he builds for him- 
self a mighty mausoleum, and yet he dies 
and is forgotten. Here is another, like 
Paul the apostle, who owns no foot of 
soil, who has no money in the bank, who 
holds no office in the empire. But though 
he was poor, he has made many rich; and 
though he seemed to have nothing, yet in 
reality the world is in his debt. 

This paradox may be illustrated in many 
ways. Perhaps an imaginative child is 
the simplest example of it. He has noth- 
ing but a few sticks and stones, yet out 
of it he will build a palace and from that 
palace he will rule an empire. He has 
nothing but an old log by the side of the 
road, but on that log he sails away to 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 133 

southern seas and takes on board his 
cargoes of ivory and crystal balls. We 
see nothing but an old log. He sees the 
foam bubbling up around the prow. He 
sees the fish swimming in tropical waters 
and the palm groves waving on the dis- 
tant shore. He has nothing, yet he pos- 
sesses all things, for he lives in the 
imaginative life of the spirit. 

Saint Francis was such an one. He fed 
on the crusts of poverty. His only pos- 
session was a crucifix and a coarse Fran- 
ciscan gown. Nevertheless, the world be- 
longed to him. Birds and flowers, trees 
and mountains, were loving parts of his 
dominion. 

Jesus is the supreme example of this 
truth. That morning when he swept up 
the shavings from the floor, put away the 
tools in order and locked the workshop 
door at Nazareth, he turned his back upon 
his only earthly possession, and when he 
went out from the shelter of his mother's 
roof into the wide world waiting to re- 
ceive him, he had not a place to lay his 
head. He took no money in his purse; 
the blue sky was henceforth to be the 



134 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

roof above him; the warm earth was the 
bed beneath him. He asked no privilege 
of office, honor or emolument from his 
countrymen, and yet he moved through 
the crowded world as a King in the midst 
of his country. He was absolutely at home 
in every environment. Nothing he really 
needed was ever lacking 

When he desired a colt on which to 
ride after a weary journey, there was one 
at hand to lend it. When he wished for 
a chamber in which to entertain his 
friends, the key to the good man's house 
in Jerusalem was his for the asking. 
When he sought a garden in which to 
rest and pray, there was one on the slopes 
of Olivet whose gate stood always open 
against his coming. And \yhen at last 
he needed a tomb in which to lie, the rich 
man of Arimathaea had one ready, a new 
tomb under the hill among the garden 
flowers. So he moved through life, hav- 
ing nothing and yet possessing all things. 

When will we learn that real wealth is 
measured only by inward values! Larger 
profits and higher wages and the multi- 
plication of one's stocks and bonds and 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 135 

acres never produce genuine prosperity. 
In most cases these things do not even 
bring with them satisfaction but only 
multiplies weariness and responsibility. 
The only value attaching to these material 
resources is relative to the measure in 
which they express the inward ideals. 

Wealth of spirit is more precious than 
rubies and more to be desired than gold, 
yea than much fine gold. 



"SPIRIT WITH SPIRIT CAN MEET" 

Bishop Westcott, a distinguished Eng- 
lish scholar and clergyman, was one day 
visiting with a friend one of the great 
English churches. Very few people were 
present at the service, and his friend, 
looking about, remarked "How empty the 
place is!" "No," replied the Bishop, in a 
hushed and reverent voice, "It is not 
empty, it is full." 

These words breathe of immortality. 
They suggest the innumerable company 
which no man can number, of all nations 
and peoples and kindreds and tribes, who 
are not only before the throne but who 
also surround us with spiritual fellowship. 

We very frequently repeat that phrase 
from our ancient formula, "I believe in 
the communion of saints," but like many 
other old phrases it has been worn thread- 
bare by constant usage until its real sig- 
nificance escapes us. It is not limited to 
those with whose physical presence we are 

136 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 137 

familiar. It extends to those who have 
passed beyond our sight and touch. It 
refers not only to saints on earth but 
saints in heaven, that vast host of the 
good and great of all nations and all 
times with whom the soul has fellowship. 
If you believe in the communion of 
saints, you have something in common 
with Abraham and Moses, Isaiah and 
Paul, with Saint Francis and Saint Ber- 
nard, with John Huss and John Wesley, 
with Washington and Lincoln, with Edith 
Cavell, Joyce Kilmer, Donald Hankey, 
and myriads of other just men made 
perfect. If you believe in the communion 
of saints, you have a right to feel that 
every place is crowded, not only with 
persons whom you can see and touch, 
but with scores of others whose interests 
and sympathies would naturally incline 
them to that place and that hour. They 
are there in spirit, far more real than the 
solid ground under our feet or the walls 
that rise around us. 

We have sadly blundered in conceiving 
of heaven and earth as totally cut off 
from one another, with no communica- 



138 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

tion between them. Life knows no di- 
vision between the life here and the 
life hereafter. Life is one and the same. 
Death cannot break the continuity of life. 
Because of our unchristian error in thus 
separating heaven and earth, the hungry 
human heart has taken its revenge by 
resorting to all the trickery and foolish- 
ness of commercialized spiritualism; to 
table-tipping and table-rapping. We need 
to think of our dead in a much more 
Christian way. The truth is that heaven 
and earth are not closed to one another. 
They are open, and fellowship between 
them is possible in many marvelous ways. 
Their relation is like that of the harbor 
to the open sea. As long as the harbor 
mouth is kept dredged and free, the 
same great pulse-beat of the tide which 
throbs in mid-ocean pulsates also on the 
sandy shores of the harbor. Just so long 
as the attitude of our spirits toward the 
Infinite and the eternal is responsive and 
free, so long will the tides of divine 
influence rise and fall on the shores of 
our being, communicating to our souls the 
message of the Infinite. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 139 

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills 
and the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who 
reigns? 

"Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and 
limb, 
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from 
Him? 

"Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest 
thy doom, 
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor 
and gloom. 

"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with 
Spirit can meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet." 

Alfred Tennyson, who wrote those lines, 
lived so largely the life of the spirit that 
sometimes he hardly knew whether he 
was in the body or out of the body. 
Walking one day with a friend on the 
high, wind-swept hills about his place, 
both being deep in contemplation, they 
came at length to a gate. Tennyson took 
it in both his hands and shook it vigor- 
ously and, turning to his friend he said, 
Sometimes I have to take hold of objects 



a 



140 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

to be sure they are real." And again to 
another friend when they were walking 
in the fields he said: "God is with us in 
this meadow just as surely as Christ was 
with the two disciples on the way to 
Emmaus. We cannot see him or touch 
him, but he is here as certainly as you 
are by my side." 

We all know something of what this 
means, though perhaps in a less degree. 
You have a body, just as you have a 
house or a farm. Your body does not 
feed and clothe itself. You feed and 
clothe and care for it as you do for the 
rest of your physical possessions. Your 
body is not you. You have feet and 
limbs that carry you whithersoever you 
will, as a horse or a machine might do. 
But you direct their movements and 
choose their goal. You have hands cun- 
ningly wrought into skillful tools, so deli- 
cate that they may fashion a watch, so 
strong that they may build a temple. 
But you design the watch, you plan the 
temple, you direct their energy and skill. 
You have eyes that see, but your eyes 
do not see the picture. They merely see 



FLUTES OP SILENCE 141 

certain physical pigments so placed upon 
the canvas that they absorb and reflect 
the light waves of the ether. It is you 
who see the picture. It is you who so 
interpret and coordinate those impressions 
that you get from them the meaning 
which Raphael painted into the canvas of 
his Madonna or Angelo flung in color 
upon the walls and ceiling of the Sistine 
Chapel. You have ears that hear, but 
they do not hear music, merely a suc- 
cession of vibrations produced through 
material agencies. It is you who hear 
the music and who so interpret those 
vibrations that you get from them the 
message which Handel embodied in his 
Messiah or Beethoven incorporated in his 
symphony. 

It is this invisible you, this spiritual 
personality, which is the one thing that 
is worth while. It will survive the wreck 
of all earthly conditions. Does it not 
persist through all earthly changes and 
upheavals, so that you know yourself 
this morning as the same person that 
struggled up through poverty and dis- 
couragement twenty, thirty, or forty years 



142 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

ago? The circumstances of your life 
have passed through successive transitions. 
Your very physical being is in a state of 
flux and has flowed away from you entirely 
and been renewed again, time after time, 
and yet your central self persists. If it 
can survive so much of shock and change 
and confusion, will it not survive the 
shock of death, which to some of us will 
come far more quietly than have many 
of the other changes of experience? 

Do not think of the dead as lying in 
the cemeteries waiting for some final 
trump to sound. They are not there. 
The cemeteries are the emptiest places in 
our city. They are filled only with cast 
off garments of the flesh for which we have 
no further use. Those that wore them 
are gloriously, vitally, spiritually alive and 
busy about some higher ministry, where 
they are fulfilling in more perfect ways 
the eternal will of God. 

Nor are they cut off from all connec- 
tion with us. The highest sort of fellow- 
ship that we know anything about is 
this spiritual comradeship of soul with 
soul. Earthly friendships frequently be- 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 143 

gin on the lower levels of physical prox- 
imity. You happen to be seated next to 
some one at table, or you are thrown 
together as companions in travel. But 
if your relationship ripens into anything 
worth the name of friendship, it soon 
becomes independent of outward condi- 
tions. Such an identification of sym- 
pathy and interest takes place that, 
though land and sea might divide you, 
you would still walk side by side, still 
feel the touch of one another's spirit, still 
rejoice in one another's sympathy. Death 
cannot sever the bonds of such a kinship. 
Love will claim its own in heaven as on 
earth, and in the deep silences of the 
spirit there will be continued fellowship, 
though one may be in the body and 
another out of the body. 

John Oxenham closes a poem in which 
he represents certain English parents, who 
have heard of the death of their son in 
battle, as saying to each other: 

"He is gone — yet he is near us. , 
Maybe he can see and hear us. 
Yes, we feel him, nearer, dearer. 
Tears have washed our soul's eyes clearer." 



144 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Henry Thoreau is credited with having 
remarked one day, when some one spoke 
to him of immortality, "One world at a 
time/ 5 For once he was superficial. His 
sympathetic knowledge of nature ought to 
have taught him better than that. Our 
world cannot exist shut off from other 
worlds. It is the blue of the sky that 
gives its color to the sea. It is the light 
of the sun and the moon and the stars 
which develops the verdure and the fruit- 
age of the earth. Our world would shrivel 
and die if it were not for its contact with 
other worlds. And I venture to say that 
if all hope of immortality, and the ideals 
that follow in its wake, could be blotted 
out, even the coarser earthly values would 
cease to be. Even property values are 
dependent upon spiritual conditions. 

It is in proportion as we live in the 
light of the eternal life that life here and 
now becomes significant. 



SING ON 

Sing on, O poet! though the world heed 
not; 
Pour thy soul's music on the desert air; 
Somewhere it will enrich the lonely spot, 
And cause some sweet wild rose to blos- 
som there. 

Break thou thine alabaster on His feet, 
Whose gentle voice rebuked the sordid 
greed 
That did condemn the waste of ointment 
sweet, 
Offered in grateful love, and not for need. 

Think thy high thoughts — apart, if needs 
must be — 
Nor scorn the gift for loving purpose 
given, 
Used for His glory, as a bird-song free, 
The floating incense will arise to heaven. 

If one sad heart be lifted to the light, 

One weary heart unburdened of its care, 
One deathless impulse given toward the 
right, 
One thorn-set way with promise made 
more fair — 

145 



146 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Thou hast thy meed. Though only star- 
flowers bloom 
In wild, waste beauty o'er thy place of 
rest, 
Somewhere, in God's fair mansions, there 
is room; 
Some time, the King shall name thee 
true and blest. 



THE ARISTOCRACY OF SERVICE 

We do not usually think of Jesus as a 
violent social reformer. But some of the 
principles he enunciated are revolutionary 
in a startling degree. The usual stand- 
ards of society he reverses. Those whom 
he cataloged as worthy of special com- 
mendation, such as the good Samaritan, 
the widow whose two mites were placed 
in the treasury, the woman with the 
alabaster box, and the publican who stood 
afar off smiting upon his breast, all were 
commonly regarded by the code of his 
own day as social outcasts, or at least 
social unfortunates. 

The seal of greatness has commonly been 
placed upon the privileged few who have 
achieved for themselves or their children 
wealth, rank, power, or some form of 
outward distinction. Jesus transferred the 
emphasis to usefulness and character. He 
insisted that the greatest were those who 
rendered the largest measure of helpful 

147 



148 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

and productive ministry. He created a 
new aristocracy — the aristocracy of service. 
The world has been very slow in coming 
to his point of view, although lately the 
process has been accelerated. Primitive 
man lived altogether unto himself. As a 
child a deep impression was made on my 
mind by an aged and rather morose woman 
who would sit in the chimney corner and 
mutter to herself a jingle that I have 
never forgotten: 

"As I walked by myself 
I talked to myself, 

And myself said unto me, 
'Beware of thyself, 
Take care of thyself, 

For nobody cares for thee.' " 

That was the creed of primitive man. 
His hand was against every man and 
every man's hand was against him. Each 
individual was the uncompromising foe of 
every other. Between their several caves 
or dwellings a dead line, or pale, was 
drawn, and whoever crossed chat pale into 
his neighbor's territory was an outlaw. 
There were no common interests, no 
rights of social intercourse or intermarriage. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 149 

A man's wife was the victim of his spear. 
She became the slave of her captor and 
he fought for her and her children as he 
did for his other physical possessions. 

This primitive selfishness has been very 
hard to overcome. Even with the begin- 
nings of society, the chief of the clan or 
the head of the tribe was usually the 
strong man who could hang the largest 
number of scalps on the ridgepole of his 
dwelling, or bring home the greatest 
amount of plunder from his neighbor's 
village. 

The age of trade and barter introduced 
a new standard of measurement, but the 
principle involved was just the same. 
Money in the form of wampum or other 
means of exchange became the gauge of 
a man's importance in the community. 
The fortunate person was he into whose 
lap had been poured a golden stream of 
wealth, for wealth was an expression of 
power. Gradually there developed a vast 
economic system in which the financially 
strong were apt to exploit the financially 
weak, as the physically strong hitherto 
had exploited the physically weak. 



150 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Meanwhile another principle had been 
introduced into social evolution. It was 
the outgrowth originally of the maternal 
instinct, but it was greatly accelerated 
through the influence of Christianity. It 
is the principle of love and good will. 
In an ever-widening circle it affected the 
lives of individuals until there have come 
to be large numbers of kind-hearted, un- 
selfish, and Christlike persons. In all 
their personal relationships they live ac- 
cording to the law of love and service, 
but as members of a competitive social 
order, their collective action is still selfish. 
For this reason considerations of human- 
ity often have had so little response from 
communities made up largely of Christian 
persons. While our individual relation- 
ships have in many cases been Christian- 
ized, the social order to which we belong 
is still pagan. 

The survivals of this primitive selfish- 
ness may be observed in many ways. It 
survives in our amusing notions of aris- 
tocracy. We insist on kow-towing to 
those whose distinction is in some outward 
physical preeminence. It extends even to 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 151 

residents in certain favored sections of 
our cities, such as "The Sunny Side of 
Commonwealth Avenue" or "The Water 
Side of Beacon Street." 

It survives in our system of education. 
"An examination of the books which are 
commonly used in the public schools will 
find but few problems which would im- 
press the child with the thought that be- 
ing and giving are more to be honored 
than getting and gaining. The average 
problems in the schoolboy's arithmetic un- 
consciously tend toward selfishness. The 
point of most of them is to ascertain how 
much did the man gain. The answer may 
be in the form of money, marbles, horses, 
or houses, but the result intuitively fixes 
in the child's mind that the purpose of 
life is to gain something for oneself. The 
value of an education is only conceived 
in terms of dollars and cents. If it helps 
the boy to make money, it is considered 
practical, but not otherwise. Parents, 
teachers, preachers, business men, all are 
inclined to look up to the boys who make 
good rather than to those who are good; 
and we are generally inclined to praise the 



152 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

youth that 'gets on in the world/ as the 
phrase goes, irrespective of how he does 
it" 1 

It survives again in the competitive 
spirit of industry, which is cruel and 
heartless in its results, for the reign of 
competition is the reign of fear. The 
rate of mortality for small business con- 
cerns is higher than infant mortality. If 
all the leaden weight of fear of all the 
business men who watch the vanishing 
margin of profit through the year could 
be gathered up and set before us in some 
dramatic form, it would palsy our joy in 
life. Such a reign of fear is never the 
reign of God. It brings out the worst 
that is in men. It makes them lie and 
cheat and steal. Finally, this primitive 
selfishness survives in those governments 
whose political philosophy is based upon 
the principle that might makes right, that 
necessity knows no law, and that the end 
justifies the means, however unworthy 
they may be. 

Recently events have been hurrying us 
faster than we knew toward Christ's 

1 Babson, The Future of the Nations, pp. 90, 91. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 153 

point of view. We have been learning 
some things on a large scale. We have 
discovered the satisfaction and the effi- 
ciency of cooperation. We have seen 
millions of men nicely articulated in a 
great cooperative task which could never 
have been realized without this fine spirit 
of "Get together." "A cooperative group 
in which all have a common end, each 
man contributing his share and depending 
upon his fellows for their part, brings men 
into the most efficient, the most happy, 
and the most moral relation to one 
another." 1 

Team work of whatever sort, on the 
ball field or on the battlefield, in the 
factory or in the faculty of a college, in 
the home or in the nation, puts zest into 
labor and calls forth the noblest qualities 
in human nature. The instinct and ca- 
pacity for cooperation is one form of the 
social instinct of love. "Wherever men 
work out a smooth and effective system 
of cooperation, love has found an organ- 



*W. Rauschenbusch: Christianizing the Social Order, 
published by the Macmillan Company, New York. By 
permission of the publisher. 



154 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

ized social expression, and as such a group 
works in common, the capacity for larger 
understanding and good will is strength- 
ened." 1 The war has carried us forward 
on the flood tide of a vast allied effort 
to a clearer recognition of this truth than 
we have ever known before. 

We have also learned the beauty of 
service in a unique and emphatic way. 
Honor has been given, not to the man 
who buttoned himself up in his own in- 
terests and refused to participate in meet- 
ing the common need, but, rather, to the 
man who, in this critical hour, counted 
everything that he possessed as dust in 
the balance in comparison with the com- 
mon weel. It is to welcome the return 
of these hosts who have been "in service' 5 
that our streets are lined with shouting 
men and women and singing children. 
The stars of blue and gold in the service 
flags flung to the breeze from the door- 
ways of our homes, our factories, our 
churches, and our public buildings have 



X W. Rauschenbusch: Christianizing the Social Order, 
published by the Macmillan Company, New York. By 
permission of the publisher. 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 155 

shown us the greatness of sacrificial living. 
The cross, the symbol of this truth through- 
out the Christian centuries, towers above 
the wreck and ruin of these terrible years. 

"His church a blackened ruin — scarce one stone 
Left on another. Yet, untouched alone 
The cross still stands! 

"His shrines o'erthrown, his altars desecrate, 
His priests the victims of a pagan hate, 
The cross still stands! 

"'Mid all the horrors of the reddened waste, 
The thundrous nights, the dark and dreadful days, 
The cross still stands ! 

"Faith folds her wings, and Hope at times grows dim, 
The world goes wandering away from Him, 
His cross still stands!" 

We have discovered the worthlessness of 
mere material resources when they are un- 
inspired by spiritual ideals; ideals of service. 
Millions of men trained to move with the 
accuracy of a machine, disciplined to perfec- 
tion, armed to the utmost, have gone down 
to defeat before millions of other men, 
not so well trained or armed at the be- 
ginning, but actuated by the force of such 



156 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

an ideal. Once more, we have seen the 
accumulated treasure of a land swept 
away, its cities burned, its fields de- 
stroyed, its mines and factories deliber- 
ately ruined, but its spirit surviving in a 
fine and triumphant way. We have sub- 
mitted to all sorts of physical incon- 
venience; our special privileges taken from 
us, wealth and property commandeered, 
our rights in inheritance questioned. And 
all for the sake of the common good, the 
welfare of the largest number. 

Through all the confusion, change, and 
unrest the one thing that seems increas- 
ingly clear is that we are moving, how- 
ever falteringly, toward our Lord's aris- 
tocracy of service. The revolution through 
which we are passing may continue in a 
quiet and orderly fashion, so much so 
that we who are older may not be greatly 
affected by it, but the future of our chil- 
dren will be largely influenced by such 
changes as I have suggested. Material 
wealth will not benefit them so much. 
Money will not mean to them what it 
has meant to us. They will not be able 
to depend upon it as we have. They 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 157 

will be living in a world where people 
will be measured by different standards. 
Not by what they have accumulated but 
by what they have disbursed. Not by 
what they have gained in the way of 
outward distinction for themselves, but by 
the way in which they have fitted their 
time, their strength and their talent into 
the service of all. Not by the measure 
in which they have increased their own 
fortune, but by the degree in which they 
have enriched the common life. 

I do not mean to imply that culture 
and wealth will be no longer of significance. 
We cannot give to others what we do not 
have ourselves. And no mechanical effort 
to reduce men to the dead level of out- 
ward uniformity can possibly succeed be- 
cause of the great variety of inward 
equipment. But culture and wealth will 
be judged by a new standard. They will 
no longer be of value in themselves. 
Their importance will be in direct pro- 
portion to the spirit of service with which 
they are administered. 

Roger Babson, business engineer, in one 
of his periodical letters to his clients, says 



158 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

that not long ago he visited a college town 
and took dinner at the college Inn. The 
room was full of young men and women. 
He was shown to a table occupied by a 
young lady who was unattended. They 
fell into conversation. He discovered that 
she was the daughter of an American 
ambassador to one of the European coun- 
tries; that she had been educated in a 
great French school, and that this was 
her first year in an American institution. 
When he rose to go he thanked her for 
what she had told him and added, "You 
seem to be different from these other 
young people." 

"Perhaps so," she replied, "but it is 
not their fault. They would feel the 
same as I do if they had seen what I have 
seen during the last six years. It is be- 
cause I have learned something that they 
have not learned. I have learned that 
there is nothing in possessions or clothes 
or what people think of you. The only 
thing that counts is life and service." 

This is the lesson learned in the hard 
school of experience during these last 
terrible years. We are talking much about 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 159 

democracy, and much that we say is 
merely talk. There can be no true de- 
mocracy in any land until the majority 
of its people have joined the Aristocracy 
of service. 



DOES THE FUTURE BELONG TO 
CHRIST? 

Does the future belong to Christ? Will 
the Christian type of character ultimately 
dominate the world to the exclusion of all 
lower types? 

An eminent and fearless Englishman 
published a book some years ago entitled 
No Refuge But in Truth. In it occurs 
this paragraph, which is all the more 
significant because the author was a rad- 
ical in religion and in no way pledged to 
Christianity. He said: "The type of char- 
acter embodied in the gospel history is 
an absolute embodiment of love, both in 
the way of action and conviction, crowned 
by the highest possible example of self- 
sacrifice for the sake of others. This 
being the case, it is difficult to see how 
the Christian type of character can ever 
be outgrown or ever lose the allegiance 
of the moral world." Was Goldwin Smith 
right? Will Christ finally come into his 

160 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 161 

own? Is he never to be outgrown and 
will his type of character finally dominate 
all human relationships? Many thought- 
ful souls are asking these questions to-day 
with a desperate earnestness. 

Jesus himself believed implicitly in the 
triumph of his own spirit and character. 
Sitting one day on the hillside above the 
lake, and addressing himself to a hand- 
ful of men who sat around him on the 
grass, men to whom he had communi- 
cated something of his spirit, he said, 
"Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the 
light of the world." No more presumptu- 
ous statement could have been imagined. 
Who were these men? They were fisher- 
men, artisans, and peasants, drawn from 
neighboring villages and farms, unknown 
outside their own communities. They 
were without wealth, influence, or that 
worldly wisdom that comes from travel or 
experience. They literally had no connec- 
tions that might give them a measure of 
power; yet he insisted that they were the 
salt that was to save society and the light 
that was to illuminate the world. The 
statement is presumptuous even now. 



162 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Nineteen centuries have passed and the 
kindling flame of Christ's vision has been 
communicated to unnumbered thousands 
of individual souls, but the world at large 
is still untouched by his spirit and un- 
controlled by his principles. Its indus- 
trial and commercial relationships are still 
based largely upon greed and up to the 
present hour its political and diplomatic 
policies have been dictated by falsehood 
and selfishness. Society still has great 
need of the salt that will save it from cor- 
ruption and the light that will illuminate 
its darkness. 

One is forced to the conviction that to 
shrewd, hard-headed, practical people of 
our own generation the Christian type of 
character appears to be eminently unprac- 
tical in its application to actual conditions. 
"It would blow all our existing institutions 
to atoms." To a world so largely dominated 
by ideals of force and selfishness as ours 
is there seems to be in the Christian char- 
acter too little that is virile, aggressive, 
and dominant. It is no easy task to 
persuade a society whose creed is, in 
the words of Longfellow, "Meekness 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 163 

is weakness, strength is triumphant," that 
"stronger than steel is the sword of the 
Spirit and greater than anger is love that 
subdueth." 

There is a deep conviction, however, 
born out of the struggle of these terrible 
days, that the Christian type of character 
is not only the highest that has ever 
been revealed to us, but is also bound 
to triumph over the relationships of life. 
Christ will come into his own to the 
exclusion of all lower types of character, 
and this because of the unconquerable 
persistency of the Christian ideal. The 
stars in their courses fight for it. It is 
in harmony with the laws of the universe 
and it cannot fail. 

We must not be discouraged or per- 
plexed because there appears to be so 
little in the Christian ideal that is virile, 
aggressive, and dominant, for in the long 
run there is no power like the power 
of gentleness and no energies that can 
compare with the quiet forces of the 
Spirit. In nature it is only the de- 
structive forces that are violent and 
obtrusive. The constructive forces are 



164 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

silent and unseen, working beneath the 
surface. The earthquake may rend a 
continent, heave up a mountain range, or 
submerge an island; the hurricane may lay 
waste the forest and the city, but, after 
all, these are only incidental breaks in 
the quiet and beneficent course of nature. 
As soon as they are over, nature continues 
her silent and unobtrusive processes of 
growth and nourishment as if they had 
never been. 

You hold in your hand a seed. It is 
so tiny and insignificant that a breath 
will blow it from you. It is the sport 
of wind and rain, of beak of bird and 
hoof of beast. It has nothing to present 
except its own inherent vitality. Never- 
theless, all nature fights for it, and when 
you place it in the soil, all the powers of 
heaven and earth are so adapted to its 
life and growth that the entire universe 
cooperates with that frail and tiny bit 
of life. 

Jesus understood this when he said of 
the Kingdom, "It is like a seed which 
when it is sown in the ground is the 
simplest form of life, but when it is grown 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 165 

it becometh a great tree and the fowls 
of the air lodge in the branches thereof." 

Thus nature becomes witness to the 
power of gentleness, and history has the 
same story to tell. It may seem to record, 
as John Ruskin said, "twenty undoings 
to one deed; twenty desolations to one 
redemption," but in the long run history 
takes account only of the noble and the 
good. The generations of the cruel pass 
away into darkness and oblivion, but one 
tender and loving heart is remembered 
forever more. Alexander, Caesar, Charle- 
magne, where are they? Only empty 
names, and the empires which they builded 
are blown in dust along the aisles of time. 
Meanwhile the whole world goes to school 
to saints and poets and prophets who 
exemplify the triumph of the powers of 
the Spirit as against the powers of physical 
force. 

I have been reading again Dr. Storrs's 
life of Bernard of Clairvaux. Here was 
a man who, without office, honor, or 
emolument, ruled the world of his time 
by virtue of his own inherent goodness. 
He did not dwell in the courts of kings 



166 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

nor in the palaces of popes, but in one 
of the wild and lonely valleys of Bur- 
gundy, yet the world of his day made a 
path into that valley to the door of his 
quiet cloister. Kings called him into their 
counsels, and popes sought his advice and 
suggestions. It was primarily because of 
his spiritual supremacy that he became 
the ruling power behind the thrones. The 
principle is of very general applica- 
tion. 

The storm of hate and oppression, 
which now ruffles the face of society as 
a gale ruffles the surface of the sea, will 
finally blow itself out, and meanwhile the 
quiet, constructive forces of love and 
goodness are unobtrusively at work. They 
manifest themselves in kindly ministra- 
tions to famine-stricken multitudes and 
enfeebled peoples, and in the growing 
spirit of cooperation and understanding 
between nations of varied interests and 
types. Anger is the hurricane that will 
pass away, but love is the sunshine that 
will remain. 

In the bringing together of masses 
of men from the ends of the earth; men 



FLUTES OP SILENCE 167 

of every nation under heaven, who spoke 
different languages and observed different 
customs, but who marched side by 
side and fought shoulder to shoulder in the 
same cause, there is a promise of the 
fulfillment of Robert Burns's prayer: 

"Then let us pray that come it may — 
As come it will, for a' that, 
That man to man the world o'er 
Shall brothers be for a' that." 

There are two principles always at work 
in nature and in life. They seem to be 
antagonistic and irreconcilable, and yet in 
the Christian character they are coin- 
cident. One is the struggle for self. You 
can see it in the battle which goes 
on in nature; the "eternal fierce destruction 
where every maw the greater on the less 
feeds evermore." The robin ravening the 
worm, the cat stalking the robin, the dog 
chasing the cat, the man beating the dog. 
We have formulated this ceaseless con- 
flict in what we call "the law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest/ 5 In the early stages 
of society it appears in the perpetual 
state of war, which was not then, as now, 



168 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

man's occasional occupation, but his every- 
day employment. In the higher realms 
of industry and commerce it appears in 
the spirit of competition. The ordinary 
maxims of the business world are based 
upon the assumption that every man 
must get all he can and keep all he can, 
and that the interests of one class are 
inimical to the interests of another. It 
reveals itself in the world at large in that 
lust for power which insists that the end 
justifies the means, that might makes 
right, and which produces that relentless 
struggle for a place in the sun which is at 
the basis of our present international 
confusion. 

Side by side with this principle there 
is another, not so apparent and obtrusive, 
but none the less forceful in its operation. 
It is the struggle for the life of others. John 
Fiske tells us that it first made its appear- 
ance with the parental instinct and in 
the necessity of protecting and caring for 
the offspring. The first spark of tender 
feeling that was ever kindled in the hu- 
man breast was drawn from the heart of 
some primeval mother who bent over the 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 16£ 

dependent and helpless infant in her 
arms. Thus the seed of gentleness has 
borne its fruit in all our philanthropic 
institutions and beneficent movements 
which seek the common good. It may 
be found embodied in every hospital, 
orphanage, school, and church, for these 
institutions are not organized for personal 
profit. They do not pay dividends; they 
exist only for the good they can do. 
It finds its highest expression in that mys- 
tical instinct of self-sacrifice which leads a 
man willingly to give up life itself in be- 
half of home, country, God — those ideals 
that he carries in his heart . 

Now, these apparently antagonistic prin- 
ciples are found in the Christian interpre- 
tation of life to be coincident. The 
chasm between them has been bridged 
over in the life and love and sacrifice of 
Jesus Christ our Lord. He made it very 
plain that the only way we can really 
find our highest selves is by losing our- 
selves in service, and that the salvation 
of our own souls is dependent upon the 
measure of our sacrifice for the sake of 
others. "He that findeth his life," said 



170 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Jesus, "shall lose it; and he that loseth 
his life for my sake shall find it." 

Everything indicates that the future 
belongs to this type of character. It will 
persist and triumph for the same reason 
that the seed persists. God and the 
universe are on its side. It is in harmony 
with the fundamental laws and principles. 
Everything fights for it. The Christian 
that is to be will develop new forms of 
education and industry, of government and 
of religion. There will be new standards 
of success and man's value to society will 
no longer be dependent upon his wealth, 
but upon his character. It will no longer 
be asked, "How much is he worth?" but, 
"What good has he done?" Promotion 
and advancement will be based quite as 
much upon character as upon intelligence 
and efficiency. All institutions will be 
measured by what they contribute to the 
welfare of society. There will be a new 
spirit in education. Our youth will no 
longer be dominated with the idea that 
they are to get for themselves all they 
can out of life. They will be taught that 
the goal is, rather, to put into life all 



FLUTES OF SILENCE 171 

they can give. We will not urge 
them to "make good" but, rather, to 
"do good and be good." The textbooks of 
our schools and the spirit of our teachers 
will be dominated not by the commercial 
idea, but by the humanitarian purpose. 
In the great family of nations, selfish, 
ingrowing patriotism will give way to true 
internationalism and the spirit of coopera- 
tion will prevail over the spirit of in- 
dividual competition. 

"Ah, but," you say, "that is a far cry. 
It is too distant to be of immediate in- 
terest." I am not so sure of that. The 
old order, based upon selfishness and 
greed, is certainly going to pieces about 
as fast as it can, and the new order is 
thrusting itself up into the world's con- 
sciousness. Sooner than we imagine, it 
may be, the kingdom of good will and 
love will be at hand. At any rate, we 
have no right to judge the energies of 
the Spirit by our trifling measurements of 
time. It has taken thousands of years 
for man to reach the present stage of 
his development. But whether the time 
be long or short, the future belongs to 



172 FLUTES OF SILENCE 

Christ, and only those who serve with 
him are on the winning side. Sooner or 
later we will "come in the unity of faith, 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ/' 

u 'Tis coming up the steeps of time, 

And this old world is getting brighter; 
We may not see its dawn sublime, 

Yet high hopes make the heart-throb lighter; 
We may be sleeping in the ground 

When it awakes the world in wonder; 
But we have felt it gathering round, 
And heard its voice of living thunder, 
'Tis coming, yes, 'tis coming!" 



"NONE OTHER NAME" 

No other way, no other name; 
My heart is kindled to a flame, 
As thus with steadfast faith I see 
No other way or name for me. 

Loud voices cry, "Lo, here! Lo, there!" 
Wise men are seeking everywhere 
New lights that gleam o'er hill and plain 
And tremble far across the main. 

Still springs my thought exultant, free, 
No other way, or name for me. 
"I am the Way, the Truth, the Life," 
Sounds clear through all surrounding strife. 

My soul no other stair can climb, 
To where eternal glories shine, 
And so in storm or calm I see 
No other way or name for me. 



173 



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